Details are presented of the various inputs into the Egyptian agro-ecosystem together with information on its food production. Egyptian agriculture is shown to be very productive and efficient in its exploitation of solar and fossil fuel energy inputs compared with the other national systems for which information is available, but less so in its use of water and of man and animal power. The industrialized, irrigated agricultural systems of California and Israel offer little promise as a model for further horizontal expansion and increases in the productivity of the current Egyptian system in that they would be expensive, difficult and disruptive to implement and show no evidence that they would produce more food. The very intensive multi-cropping, irrigated system of agriculture widely practised in S.E. Asia is suggested as a more realistic model for vertically expanding and increasing the productivity of the Egyptian agro-ecosystem.