 But, you know, our last but not least speaker is Dr. Kamal Abdullah, he's Managing Director and CEO of Canal Sugar. It's a UAE Egyptian multi-billion dollar agriculture and industry group in Egypt that aims to ensure Egypt's self-sufficiency in sugar. He will be speaking about water, food security issues. Food security was an important issue for financial institutions like our during the pandemic and, you know, at that time, we had meetings, we received calls saying, listen, if people will go to the streets, it's because of food security. So let us pay a lot of attention and we were financing balance of payment deficits over the last three years. He will be covering those issues and they're relevant also to national security, economic and social stability of the region. Please, Dr. Kamal. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. First time I heard the word anti-fadah, I was a kid in school and it was in the 70s, 1977. And it was the first bread anti-fadahs that happened in Egypt and Lebanese. And there was an attempt by, they said that government to increase the price or remove the subsidies over food, over bread. And there were demonstrations and riots and it was called the Bread Anti-Fadahs of 77, resulting in over 100 dead, 100 people dead. Followed by 1984, the Tunisian anti-fadah, again bread anti-fadah, again 70 people dead, riots in the streets and again over governments trying to remove some subsidies on food. Food security now is a buzzword. I've been in this field now for about 20 years, mostly from the private sector, having worked in UAE as well as in the region, Saudi, Qatar and now Egypt, working on food security issues. The good news and the bad news, food security now is a buzzword used by the taxi driver eating a falafel sandwich as much as used by a government official talking about policies. The new buzzword will be, and we are giving your heads up, it will be water security and water stress. This will be the buzzwords that we'll be hearing about. But let me connect the two. In the 80s, as I said, we had the riots, the anti-fadahs over food, so governments came with their triple A, availability, affordability, accessibility. Bring the food where, no matter where, Argentina or Australia or Romania, north, south, east west, subsidize it to the people and just make it available so they will not go and demonstrate on the street. What happened is that we end up with a different problem. We end up with a problem that said, this is not enough, these people now are getting food but unhealthy food. And so now they are becoming diabetic, they're having health problems, and now they're living longer, and now we as governments have to spend money treating them because they will live till 80, but they will need a lot of insulin shots, God forbid. So that creates a different move in food security. And we moved from availability and affordability, saying we need to move to wellness. The challenge, though, on both fronts, to subsidize it, you need money, but we are running budget deficits, and if we add the health cost that we have to pay for, which is not an option, then the food security bill is becoming massive. And hence we moved into food wellness by arguing you need local production of healthy food, but much more important than production. The buzzword you'll hear besides water security is consumption, healthy consumption. Regretfully we throw about 30% of the food we produce, and even in our consumption patterns are unhealthy, not only among the poor but among the rich in terms of consumption of food. How do we link this to water? Water is the biggest challenge now in food security in the region, in the Middle East. If we look at where our water coming from, 60% come from outside, direct Middle East. We mentioned Turkey, is it in or out? Assuming it's out, Turkey, in terms of the water rivers that are leading into Iraq and into Syria, a big issue of water accessibility by the Iraqis, Iraq, which used to be the birth of agricultural civilization. The rivers Milad, Mabein and Nahrain, they don't have enough water anymore due to the dams and other things procedures done by their neighbors. Egypt now, we all remember Egypt, Sudan and the Nile, but the Nile does not start in Egypt, not even in Sudan. We have to go back to the other countries where it starts, who are all now building dams to control access to those waters. So if we are looking at waters coming from rivers, it's problematic. Water coming from above the rain, it's almost nonexisting. And if it comes, it floods, it's even creates problems rather than solves. So where is the remaining water, which is now the most interesting part? Underground, the aquifer. Whether the aquifer in Saudi or in UAE, the aquifer in Egypt, Libya. Of course, we remember the big rivers that they wanted to do in Libya, as well as Tunisia and all that, the desert. It's relatively the same aquifers, only divided by the Red Sea. And on those, at least personally, I have a lot of experience in Egypt. We have a farm the size of Singapore, the size of Bahrain. And the only water we have is the underground water. And we are working hard modeling the aquifer, modeling the use of the water. We have now over 200 wells that will go to about 400 wells. We dig as deep as 450 meters up to 1,250 meters, reaching the Nubian waters. Now, of course, we are a large company. We have modeling. We have, for every well that we put to use, for every 10 of them, we have one which is sensor and monitoring the water. And yes, the water is dropping alarmingly. But we also work with 6,000 local farmers. And we know that most of the people in Egypt who are in agriculture, it's very easy for them to put a well without a lot of management of these wells. So when we look on the sources of water, we have problems. We are sorting it in the UAE and in the GCC by using D-cell. In Egypt, in UAE, for example, one-third of the water is coming from D-cell. But D-cell is expensive and it's not a long-term solution. Okay, when we are looking at uses of water, most of the water uses now in agriculture, but we have different challenges. We don't have enough regulation on how to use and when to use and where to use. We are abusing water in every way when it comes to consumption and use of the water. For example, if you take sugar beets, which you use in sugar, you can use as little as 2,600-metre cube of water for every faddan. But probably most people use between 6,000 to 8,000 times as much as they need to use in water. Okay, now there are different technologies that are there to use it. I won't get too much into the technical aspects of it. But I want to come back to the three critical questions. Do we have reliable efficient delivery of water in the region? We don't. It's getting there. Technology is helping a lot. Thank God for technology we are now doing more self-sufficiency production of food in the region. But still that's not enough. Are the water resources managed sustainably and efficiently? When you are talking about aquifers underground water, it should last us for 200 years plus. When you are looking not at the quantity but also the quality of the underground water, it's more and more salty water, which you cannot then use in agriculture. And that's a problem. Now, of course, there are technological developments trying to use salty water to produce agricultural products, but that's not enough. And probably the third biggest issue is our water risk being recognized and mitigated. And again, the answer regretfully is not enough. So yes, we are delivering waters better. Yes, we are using technology to use less water time after time. But when it comes to the government side and to the working with the private sector, not only with the large private sector companies, but also with the thousands and thousands of farmers, we have a lot of issues there. And are we mitigating and preparing for the risks using of water? We're not sure we're there. Many people, whether Lebanon and Israel's conflict over water use, whether it will be Turkey, Syria, and Iraq, whether it will be Ethiopia, Sudan, and Egypt, we do expect the next war, God forbid, to be over water. And if it's over water, that means it's over food. And it's over food. It means over nutrition, wealth, and health. I try to keep my comments brief because I know we are running out of time for discussion. And I will leave any other points for questions. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you, Dr. Kamil. This is a very timely issue. It's a very challenging issue. It's water. It's a very big issue with the climate change issue also.