Sesostris also, they declared, made a division of the soil of Egypt among the inhabitants, assigning square plots of ground of equal size to all, and obtaining his chief revenue from the rent which the holders were required to pay him year by year. If the river carried away any portion of a man's lot, he appeared before the king, and related what had happened; upon which the king sent persons to examine, and determine by measurement the exact extent of the loss; and thenceforth only such a rent was demanded of him as was proportionate to the reduced size of his land.
Organized by regional authorities, every Egyptian had to move about thirty cubic metres of soil in about ten days every year
The building of dams and canals was done at local or regional levels, and while in the past many held irrigation to be the prime cause for the emergence of a central government, most think nowadays that the involvement of the national government in the irrigation was probably minimal: the opening and closing of the canal sluices to Lake Moeris in the Fayum in order to regulate the flow of the river must have been a task for the central authorities.
The rights to water were as important as the land it was intended to irrigate. During the Late Period at least these rights could be sold like any commodity.
So their economic life required much government adminstration. As for the performance: "From the New Kingdom there are records of yields of between 5 and 10 sacks (200 kg to 400 kg) of corn per aroura (ca. 2800 m²) - about ¾ to 1½ tons per hectare - according to the quality and location of the field."
Probably averaged about 1.1 tons per hectsre. Our average production per hectare is 10.5l tons so... Yields were quite low by our standards.
Thanks for the info on Egyptian agriculture. Quite interesting. It bears further research.