National olive culture between present and future

A. Latif Baraka: Heba Press

Despite what has been said about the success of the green plan, this program has been the subject of a wave of criticism in recent years, not only from citizens, but even professionals in the sector have begun to join their voices to the Moroccan street, claiming that their green policy The results of the plan are no longer satisfactory and the government must work with all stakeholders in the sector to study the current situation of a number of crops that have suffered successive crises in which climate variability is of great importance, and among the sectors that have been greatly affected, especially in the last three years, is the cultivation of olive trees, whose production has decreased significantly and their prices have increased, which has led the supervisory ministry to consider supporting imports from abroad, in order to control the price of olive oil. on the national market.

– Professionals explain the current situation

The newspaper “Heba Press” met with a number of professionals from olive oil producers, most of whom expressed their fears about the recently launched indicators, represented by the decision of the Ministry of Agriculture to support the import of olives to cover the significant shortage recorded this year under the pretext of ensuring the supply of the national market and protecting the achievements of export markets, while neglecting the agricultural sector that produces this basic national product. The concerned considered the meeting of Mohamed Al-Siddiqi, Minister of Agriculture, Maritime Fisheries, Rural Development, Water and Forests, with the officials of the Federation of Exporters of Agricultural Equipment of Morocco, at the beginning of this month, as a reassuring step, and that the orientation of the ministry towards easy solutions that represent the encouragement of the importation of foreign products will drive the last nail in the coffin of the Moroccan farmer, stressing that the dialogue should have also included representatives of the latter, equating what is currently happening to a reproduction of the failure of the sacrificial animal experimentation that drained large sums of taxpayers’ money without having a clear impact on the sheep market in Morocco.

– Dialogue in the sector must start with “the areas”

Farmers have a different opinion, while the ongoing debate on the olive oil crisis in Morocco Al-Bashir, a farmer of a fifth decade from the Taroudant region, considered that the cultivation of olive trees in the region was reaching self-sufficiency 8 years ago, but with the successive years of drought, the planted areas have increased threefold, making The consumer accepts a national product of Al Haouz, Sraghna, Gussif and other regions where this agriculture is widespread, noting that all the regions famous for the cultivation of olive trees, in turn, are now experiencing a crisis.

Al-Bashir added that the national debate on the olive oil crisis must start with the farmer and the farms before moving on to the industrial units, especially in light of the difficult situation that the latter have been experiencing for years, which has been mainly affected by drought and climate change, the effects of which have been clearly evident this season, in addition to bank loans that drown many farms in bonuses and accumulated delays.

Lahcen, a farmer from Al Haouz province, believed that the ministry’s sitting down to dialogue with the second group (olive oil producers) and ignoring the first group (farmers) would push many of them into bankruptcy. He called on the professional organizations that represent them. to act to guide them on the one hand and to communicate their voices and suffering to officials and public opinion on the other hand, and also to work with those concerned to seek solutions to the problems in the sector. that the situation is experiencing, the most recent being the delay in the flowering of trees this year, which has led to low production this year.

Another farmer, this time from Sraghna Castle, and one of the well-known professional actors in the olive and olive oil production sector, commented on Al-Siddiqi’s meeting with representatives of the mustard industrial units, saying: “In fact, I do not understand why the supervisory ministry is absent from the professional organizations representing olive producers, while they are more affected than others. Many of these absent organizations have already contacted the relevant authorities without any significant response so far. In my opinion – the speaker continued – the solutions proposed on the sidelines of the August 3 meeting have nothing to mitigate or compensate for the harm caused to producers, with the exception of the activation of the program contract that we hear about but do not see in reality. , and I think that importing olives does not serve the producers, knowing that the demands of the professionals are clear and explicit and have been addressed in previous correspondence for officials who have not yet done so.

Another farmer from Kelaa de Sraghna stressed the role of professional organizations and frameworks in defending the interests of producers and agriculture, stressing in return the need for institutions at different levels to interact with their movements, adding that it is inconceivable that this interaction requires such a long time in light of the difficult situation in which we all live. He stressed: Accelerate the opening of the door to discussion and dialogue with farmers, producers and investors in the olive and olive oil sector, and even open a rapid and broad national dialogue in order to unify visions and gather conclusions to reach a national consensus on the priority of this file and its necessity for us and also for the ordinary citizen, to achieve realistic and sustainable solutions and not to focus on a few categories within the framework of easy solutions and drain the public treasury.

– Farmers were alerted earlier about the current crisis

A group of olive growers, particularly in the Marrakech-Safi region, was the first to sound the alarm since last March regarding the delay in the flowering of olive trees this season. Several of them alerted the relevant services of the ministry in charge of the sector. to the delay in the flowering of olive trees in their fields, warning of the negative repercussions of this case on the olive harvest for the current season, especially after the unprecedented rise in the prices of this vital product during the last season. In a related context, the Regional Association of Olive Producers of the Marrakech-Safi region sent a letter on this subject on behalf of the region’s olive producers to the regional interests of the Ministry of Agriculture, confirming that the olive trees this year, and after the difficult last year, it did not bloom at all and for unknown reasons, confirms the message, despite what the farmer suffered, which, according to him, will lead to a very low production, lower than that of the previous agricultural season. , and therefore the loss of employment of a large number of workers in this sector in the Marrakech-Safi region, and the destruction of the remaining olive trees.

The letter also warned that farmers who produce olives, after much suffering and patience, are on the verge of bankruptcy, especially since olive trees of all kinds have produced in the past year 2023 only a tenth of their normal production (10%), due to successive years of drought and problems with irrigation water, a situation that has led to… The weakness of the product, and the destruction of a large number of olive trees, especially those that were irrigated with rainwater or bales made by the water basin. management by dams across the valleys, not to mention the difficulty of caring for what remains of these trees, especially since the producers did not benefit from any loans or subsidies in this area. In conclusion of its letter, the association called for the interest of the Ministry to develop an urgent plan to address the danger that weighs on this national agriculture, as well as the difficult situation of farmers, stressing the need to establish contacts with the National Institutes of Agriculture Research to determine precisely and scientifically the real reasons for the failure of the flowering of olive trees this season, which some associate with drought and climate change, which damaged the olive tree before all the trees and therefore the productive farmer. They also called for supporting olive producers with free and sufficient fertilizers, while providing them with financial subsidies to cover the costs of maintaining olive trees, which range between 25,000 and 30,000 dirhams per hectare annually, stressing that without these subsidies, the farmer will not be able to take care of his trees and they will be doomed to destruction, while stressing the need to facilitate the procedures for operating and deepening wells in agricultural olive groves in coordination with the interests of the Ministry of Equipment and Water, noting that most of these wells are inherited from fathers and grandfathers, as evidenced by the fact that some of the productive trees are more than 150 years old. The concerned also called for accelerating the construction of hill dams to reduce the amount of water lost after rain, which will certainly contribute to replenishing groundwater in areas where rainfall is low.

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