Sustainability assessment of the main cereals market in Morocco: Evaluating production and import

Abstract

Agriculture is a fundamental pillar of Morocco's economy, contributing an average of 12,5% of GDP over the period 2000-2020 and helping to fight the rural exodus. Cereal crops play a major role in national agriculture, in which the main cereals, particularly wheat, occupying an important place in the dietary habits of rural and urban populations, although barley has a predominant place in animal feed. Moreover, food security in Morocco is based on cereal crops. This study aims to evaluate the evolution of the area under crop, the yield, and grain production in Morocco between 1930 and 2020, and the imports of main grains, based on the statistical approach in order to deduce the food security in the cereal sector.

The results obtained show that the area cultivated to the main cereals has almost doubled between the decade 1930-1940 and the decade 2010-2020. Soft wheat is the type of cereal that has increased significantly compared to durum wheat and barley. As for cereal production, it is subject to strong fluctuations due to the drought, with a coefficient of variation of 46%. The favorable agro-ecological zone produces 44% of the main cereals in Morocco. Moreover, grain imports multiplied by 917%, particularly bread, a basic element of the diet, where each Moroccan consumes an average of 255 kg per year of wheat, almost fourfold the world average. In addition, Morocco moved from self-sufficiency to dependence on food grain imports after independence, where the import dependency ratio (IDR) reached 39,8% compared to 60,2% for food self-sufficiency (SRR). This indicates the failure of the agricultural policy in the cereal sector. Also, in this study, the requirement of food-grain (R) has been calculated in the time horizon to 2030 and 2050, especially for wheat.

Keywords: Main cereals, Yield, Import Dependency Ratio, Food security, Morocco