Rabat– After heavy rains fell on the village of Al-Ratbah North MoroccoThe Moroccan farmer, Abdel Salam bin Al-Khimar, began plowing the land and turning it with a plow. This farmer uses a traditional plow to turn his small-area land in preparation for planting it with beans, then peas, then barley, and then he will plant it with wheat, which are crops that will be used for family consumption.
Abdel Salam, like Moroccan farmers, was optimistic about the rainfall in the months of September and October, which indicates a promising agricultural season after years of drought and lack of rain.
The plowing season began in Morocco, which falls on October 30 and lasts for 103 days. The start of the season coincided with heavy rains in various regions of Morocco, which revived the hopes of farmers and prompted them to begin plowing and sowing, especially in fallow lands, that is, those that depend on rain.
Positive expectations
The Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries, Rural Development, Water and Forests, Ahmed Bouari, gave the start of the 2024/2025 agricultural season in the cities of El Hajeb and Meknes (central country), announcing a number of measures directed at farmers with the aim of enhancing national production for this year.
Mohamed Al-Amari, a member of the Agricultural Chamber in the Casablanca region, views the agricultural season positively after the rains that the country has witnessed recently. He told Al Jazeera Net, “Our region has not witnessed this amount of rain at this time for about 7 years, so we expect the agricultural season to be better than previous years.”
Al-Amari explained that 90% of the farmers of his region (Al-Buruj Beni Miskin) turned to irrigated agriculture during the years of rain loss.
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He added, “Six years ago, fallow cultivation stopped. We were plowing the land and planting barley, but no crop would grow,” noting that last year the farmers planted the fallow land according to the direct seeding technique, but no crop grew due to lack of rain.
Riad Ohtita, an agricultural expert and consultant, explains that Morocco has gone through two stages of drought during the past six years, the first being a water drought related to the scarcity of rain, and then the second stage being a hydrological drought linked to the weakness of water reserves, especially in dams.
The spokesman told Al Jazeera Net that the rains that the Kingdom witnessed in the last two months prevented it from entering the third stage, which is the most dangerous, and is related to the drying of the soil, explaining, “When the soil dries, it loses its properties and becomes unable to produce.”
Ohtita said that the early rainfall in areas that experienced severe drought, such as the east and southeast, will limit the encroachment of herders towards the northern regions, and that its coincidence in the center and north with the so-called “seed harvest,” meaning sowing, gave a glimmer of hope to the farmers, as they are in this period beginning to plant crops. Sowing seeds.
Although he emphasized that the rains that fell herald the beginning of a good season, he believes that the agricultural season cannot be judged definitively until next March, as this period constitutes a sensitive stage for grains.
He added that if the amount of precipitation is good during this period, we can talk about a good agricultural season.
Grain production
Riad Ohtita believes that the decline in grain production in recent years is not only caused by drought, but also by the reduction of agricultural areas.
Morocco recorded a weak grain harvest during the 2021-2022 agricultural season, reaching 33.4 million quintals, with a cultivated area of 3.57 million hectares.
Morocco consumes more than 100 million quintals of grain annually.
In the 2022-2023 season, production increased to 55.1 million quintals with a cultivated area of 3.67 million hectares, which contributed to a noticeable improvement in agricultural value added.
In the 2023-2024 agricultural season, grain production decreased again to reach 31.2 million quintals, while the cultivated area reached 2.47 million hectares, a decrease of 33% compared to the previous season.
In the next agricultural season 2024-2025, the government expects the grain yield to double and reach 70 million hectares.
Measures for the agricultural season
The Minister of Agriculture, Ahmed Al-Bawari, announced in a general session in the House of Representatives that his ministry had taken incentive measures to create the appropriate conditions for the start of the current agricultural season, indicating the trend towards achieving between 4.5 and 5 million hectares of area cultivated with major grains, with the aim of instilling hope in the hearts of farmers through support. Their productive capacity and motivation to expand the cultivated areas of grains and reduce the cost of production.
The most prominent of these measures is the provision of 1.3 million quintals of approved seeds for autumn grains at prices 3 to 5% lower compared to the previous agricultural season. Then, for the first time, support for food and fodder crops such as oats, beans, lentils, chickpeas, and fodder beans ranges between 20% and 26% of the cost of production, as well as Providing the market with approximately 650,000 tons of phosphate fertilizers at the same prices as the previous season, and continuing to support 200,000 tons of nitrogenous fertilizers.
This is in addition to expanding the area allocated for direct sowing to 260,000 hectares within the national program for direct sowing, with the aim of achieving one million hectares before 2030 and distributing 200 seeds to cooperatives.
Awareness of alternative technologies
After 6 years of drought management adopted by the state, Riad Ohtita believes that awareness has increased about the importance of alternative techniques, including direct seeding, noting that the national direct seeding program has been implemented for the third year in a row.
He said that this type of seeding, on the one hand, maintains the fertility of the soil, its moisture and its properties, and on the other hand, is not financially expensive, because it does not require prior plowing and preparation of the land before planting, which will reduce the cost by about 800 to a thousand dirhams (between 80 and 100 dollars) per hectare. It is also more profitable.
The speaker called for more work to educate farmers about these techniques, especially those who are still tied to traditional methods of seeding. He also stressed the importance of directing farmers in various regions to grow products that are appropriate to the amounts of rain in each region and according to the characteristics of the soil and the needs of the region.
