Fatima Zohra Bouaziz |
Rabat (EFE) suffered its worst drought in seven decades.
This situation, in addition to the increase in the prices of fertilizers, seeds and phytosanitary products on the international market, triggered prices in the North African country, where food inflation rose to 20.1% at the end of February.
This week there was a new heat wave with temperatures ranging between 34 and 40 degrees in different regions of the country, according to the orange alert bulletin from the General Directorate of Meteorology.
premature harvest
As explained to EFE by climate and sustainable development specialist Mohamed Benabbou, “these heat waves are going to precipitate the harvest,” which will have a negative effect on the quantity and quality of various crops.
In the same sense, the president of the Moroccan Confederation of Farmers and Rural Development (COMADER), Rachid Benali, indicates that the succession of years of drought and high temperatures are impacting the production of cereals, legumes and oilseed crops, with the Except for the olive trees.
Benali is hopeful that if it rains in the coming weeks, horticultural production could be saved for this spring and summer.
Several farmers consulted by EFE expressed their alarm at this situation and asked for government intervention to help them.
“These temperatures are not normal. It hasn’t rained since the end of February. In March, which is the base of the campaign, it has not rained at all. The wheat plants have only grown between 40 and 50 centimeters and then they have stopped growing,” laments Abdelmayid el Uardi, a farmer from the town of Ain Aouda, some 30 kilometers south of Rabat.
“The small farmer is disappearing”
El Uardi has about 40 hectares of land, mostly dryland, where he plants wheat, barley and oats, and he pessimistically says that this year he expects to obtain only a 20% harvest.
From one of his fields where he grows wheat, he sadly shows some totally dry plants while in another part of the field his assistant is seen harvesting the rest with the help of a small tractor.
“The other lands are already lost, I’ll let the shepherds use them,” he laments.
The rise in prices of raw materials on its activity has affected it a lot. Now, he says, fertilizers cost him 45% more.
“There are farmers in the area who are selling their land because they can’t take it anymore. The small farmer is disappearing and the medium one is on the way to doing so, ”she warns.
90% of wells are illegal
According to the latest figures from the Ministry of Equipment and Water, the water situation in the country has improved compared to 2022, which was the driest year since 1945. Almost half of the 152 large reservoirs in the country registered fill rates that exceeded the 50% in mid-March.
But experts estimate that they are not enough given the water stress that the country is suffering as a consequence of climate change and also the overexploitation of aquifers.
Mohamed Benabbou regrets that the country lost 1,000 million cubic meters of the 4,000 million it had in reserves of its water table.
The Minister of Equipment and Water, Nizar Baraka, warned in the upper house of Parliament that 90% of the 372,000 wells registered in the country are illegal, while his department is studying their depth and measures to control drilling.
To support the agricultural and livestock sector, the Government has launched measures such as the elimination of tariffs on the import of bovine cattle, subsidizing the prices of nitrogenous fertilizers and the seeds of some crops, such as potatoes and cereals, or eliminating VAT on some products and agricultural material.
But farmers like Uardi see them as insufficient. Demand more actions, such as exonerating small farmers from paying their debts, eliminating interest rates on loans to these professionals or creating platforms so that they can sell their product without intermediaries.