Eqypt was once the breadbasket of the Mediterranean world. Some of the problem is that the farmers must sell to the government at the dictated price, destroying the incentives to produce, and to develope and improve farm land. Then there is the Aswan dam, which ended the annual Nile flooding, which enriched the soil, which, I have heard, is now seriously depleted.
If an Islamist Egyptian government makes a credible existential threat against Israel, that will cease to be a problem.