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RuralStruc

RuralStruc. Moroccan agriculture: Constraints and new challenges N.Akesbi, D.Benatya, N.El Aoufi Dakar – M’bour, 12 April 2006. Plan. 1. Situation Moroccan agriculture and its constraints… 2. Reminder of agriculture policies From the involvement of the State to its disengagement…

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RuralStruc

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  1. RuralStruc Moroccan agriculture: Constraints and new challenges N.Akesbi, D.Benatya, N.El Aoufi Dakar – M’bour, 12 April 2006

  2. Plan 1. Situation Moroccan agriculture and its constraints… 2. Reminder of agriculture policies From the involvement of the State to its disengagement… 3. Questions and tomorrow’s stakes… Risks and dangers of short-sighted liberalization

  3. Moroccan agriculture:Main characteristics • 30 M inhabitants, almost 45% in the rural sector • SAU: 8.7 Mha, only 1 Mha irrigated and 3 Mha receive more than 400 mm of water per year. • Still an agriculture largely «dual» («modern»/«traditional»), and «domestic» • 15% of GDP and 40% of the active population • A more important and diversified production, but unable to feed the population: dangerous food dependency (I/X: -50%)

  4. 1. Situation: Moroccan agriculture and its constraints 1.1. Deficiencies of a production still handicapped by the climate constraints 1.2. Trade deficits and increasing food dependency 1.3. Dangerous degradation of natural resources 1.4. Human resources: poverty and analphabetism 1.5. Land tenure structures disadvantageous to modernization 1.6. Farming and productive systems still little intensive 1.7. A sector badly articulated with the rest of the economy 1.8. Insufficient financial resources and unequally distributed

  5. 1.1.Production deficiencies GDP and Agriculture GDP: Evolution of average growth rates by decades.

  6. Evolution of Agriculture GDP per inhabitant

  7. Evolution of the cereal production per inhabitant

  8. Evolution of animal productions per inhabitant

  9. 1.2. Trade deficits… Evolution of the reserve ratio in the agro-food balance

  10. And food dependency Self-sufficiency rate of certain basic products (five-year averages)

  11. 1.3. Degradation of natural resources • Tendency to a « mining » type of exploitation of the natural resources (Plan ql) • Limitation of the arable land and land pressure (1 Active Ag = 2.3 ha; 5.2 (Tun), 14.1 (Sp), 22.8 (Fra) • Desertification, erosion and salinization of soil… * 5.5 Mha under risk of erosion * Annual loss of 22 000 ha of arable land (urbanization, overexploitation of soils…) * Annual loss of 31 000 ha of forest * Area estimated at 93% «medium to highly degraded»

  12. Water… • 3 Mha in «favorable rainfall areas» (+400 mm/an) • Irregularity of rainfall • Decrease of available quantities/inhab: 700 m3 (1185 m3 in 1990 and 651 m3 in 2025) In 2005, Morocco was classified as in « hydric stress» Annual cost of degradation: 4.6% of GDP in 2000

  13. 1.4. Human resources: poverty and analphabetism • HDI, 2005: Morocco, 124th (0.631, average LDCs: 0.694) • Morocco: The index is the lower of the Mediterranean

  14. In the rural world… • An HDI half lower to the urban one • Almost 2/3 of poor population lives in rural areas • Analphabetism and low schooling • Lack of infrastructures: roads, potable water, electricity… • Deficits in medical and sanitary coverage (infant mortality, long distance to sanitary centers…) • A population of analphabet and old farmers: * 81% analphabet (76% of SAU) * 68% are over 45 years old (45% more than 55 years)

  15. 1.5. Land tenure structures disadvantageous to modernization • Small size of exploitations: average of 6.1 ha But 71% are -5ha and –25% of SAU • Parceling: each exploitation has 6.7 parcels of 0.9ha • 25% of exploitations has an archaic status: Collective, Guich, Habous, State… • Melk: joint tenancy, defects of registration… • Micro-exploitations (-3ha in rainfall areas and 1ha in irrigation) Under the viability threshold 41% of exploitations and 5% of SAU

  16. 1.6. Productive systems little intensive • Disparities produced by the policy of dams • Fertilizers: 37 kg/ha (90 Kg on average in the world) • Selected seeds: Used by 16% of exploitations • Mechanization: 1 tractor per 225 ha cultivated (versus 1 tractor per 92 ha in the neighboring countries of the South of the Mediterranean and world average of 1 per 57 ha), Reduction of half of the unities sold: 2380 between 1986 and 1990 to 1070 between 1999 and 2003.

  17. 1.7. A sector badly articulated with the rest of the economy • Strong dependency regarding equipment and external inputs (ex: cost in currency of tomato: 64%) • Weak integration of the agro-food industry • Problems of commercial circuits, domestically and exports • Multiples deficiencies: *Absence of structured distribution circuits *Shortcoming of recognized quality norms *Weakness of professional organizations *Failure of conservation infrastructures, of transportation and of freight…

  18. 1.8. Insufficient and unequally distributed financial resources • Decrease of public resources affected by agriculture (from 20 to 10% currently) • Hydro-agriculture investments are still predominant • Vicious circle of investment and financing • Weakness of private financing: CAM (14-15% of financial needs in agriculture) and commercial banks (3%)

  19. The challenge of opening up… Is this agriculture, which is more a «way of life» than an economic activity, “summoned” to pick up on the challenge of the opening up to competition… • Is it ready to do so? • What are the chances of catching up? • How to succeed in 5 years with a reform process that did not happen in 50 years?

  20. 2. Reminder of agriculture policiesFrom the involvement of the State to its withdrawal… • Policy of dams and its consequences: Investments, management, credits and subsidies, fiscal issues, commercialization… • Structural adjustment policies and its failures: Withdrawal of the state, liberalization, privatization.. • Inflation of strategies and lack of vision… Double impasse of a double strategy: Import-substitution and Export Promotion

  21. 3. The questions and tomorrow’s stakes…Risks and dangers of a short-sighted liberalization 3.1. What food security? What are the risks and impacts of the exchange liberalization in the country’s equilibrium? 3.2. What State withdrawal? 3.3. Prices and subsidies: What regularization for what competitiveness? 3.4. Environment: What inheritance are we going to leave to our children? 3.5. What State for what regulation?

  22. 3.1. What food security? • Food Security according to the IFIs: A global and bookkeeping approach… • Food Security according to the WFO: Availability + Accessibility • The later raises questions linked to consumption models, to income, to governance systems… • It necessarily leads to the concept of Food Sovereignty…

  23. Food sovereignty This concept raises the question: Who is going to produce to satisfy what needs? Otherwise, food sovereignty states a Right, the right of a population, in the framework of the State, or a Union of States, to provide itself with the means to produce for itself its own nutrition. In the end, it’s the right to define an agriculture policy and to provide the means to implement it…

  24. What food sovereignty? Liberalization of the rotations and choice of the farmers Ex. of sugar cultures: Surface of sugar cultures has stagnated and Bet low, and as the rdts stagnate, the self-sufficiency rate decreases from 64% to 52% (between 1986/90 and 2000-03). • What « Strategic threshold» is it necessary to preserve for the food sovereignty? • How to reconcile the objectives/interests of the peasants and those of the country? Policy choices or economic decisions?

  25. Exchange liberalization: What impact in the country balance? Lack of competitiveness of the Moroccan agriculture as compared to the performing and State subsidized agricultures Last study of the WB: «Sensible negative impacts on poor rural population in certain regions and for certain types of households, impacts that should be taken into consideration by social protection policies» (Households already vulnerable; Regions of Chaouia-Ouardigha, Rabat, Tadla-Azilal, Meknès-Tafilalet)

  26. Two important questions… Beyond the quality of quantitative studies, two important questions are introduced: • What is the reaction capacity for what type of exploitations? • Is it only an issue of «social treatment»?

  27. Three profiles of exploitations in face of liberalization… • Non-viable micro-exploitations (-3ha in pluvial and 1ha in irrigation, 41% of active population and half of the rural population) Cereals, vegetables • Competitive exploitations: A portion of the big ones (2% and 22% of lands) and of SME Opportunities for vegetables, some industrial and fruit cultures (preserved vegetables, aromatic plants, citrus fruits, olive oil, wine grapes…) • Exploitations to «upgrade»: A portion of the big and the SME ones All vegetable and animal productions…

  28. Is it only a question of «social treatment»? • The stakes: the «programmed» disappearance of hundreds of exploitations and its implications at all levels. • How to manage such a transfer of population, which modifies the urban-rural balance? • It will be a global disruption, starting with the reconsideration of demographic and regional balances, continues with the economic and social reordering, and should uncork a new political and geostrategic chance … • That said, do we have the means of an aid to income?

  29. 3.2. What State withdrawal? A withdrawal that has often created more of a «void» than the long expected «shifts» In a context of insufficient means… • The private sector didn’t know or couldn’t secure the shifts so necessary • The professional organizations has not progressed much • And «freedom» has not led either to more «choices» nor to more «capacities» (A.Sen)

  30. What State withdrawal? The result has been: • Backward step in the management of production and producers • Stagnation, even the recess of the modernization efforts of exploitations and intensification of the conditions of production • Inadequate and little rational choices of production

  31. What State withdrawal?Facts… Between rent and agreement … There where the withdrawal could have suppress rent: Nothing has been done… (ex: major markets) There where the «private sector» has always taken advantage of the existing situations: agreements have permitted to perpetuate the control of the market… (Export of fruits & vegetables, import of basic products, trade of fertilizers and seeds, transformation of subsidized products…)

  32. What State withdrawal?Facts… Exports: Was it necessary to break the «OCE tool»? • To explain our disappointment, there is the protectionism of the European Union • But also the weak commercial dynamism of our exporters… • And the de-monopolization of the OCE has had only advantages • Isn’t there a real need to rethink our export strategy, and to provide it with new instruments?

  33. What State withdrawal?Facts… When the withdrawal has not permitted neither the emergence of a new order nor the preservation of the gains: Case of ORMVA… offices reduced to simple «vendeurs d’eau» … But maintained with considerable active population surpluses … And a total absence of vision regarding the future. Un true waste of human and financial resources…

  34. 3.3. Prices and subsidies: What regulation for what competitiveness? A policy that did not achieved its economic or social objectives The liberalization process has been well engaged, but the most difficult part remains to be done, which doesn’t satisfy anyone… How to let go of subsidies when poverty remains so huge? How to suppress the subsidies and remain competitive? What alternative regulation model?

  35. 3.4. Environment: What inheritance are we going to leave to our children? • Poverty and degradation of human resources • Free-trade and ecologic risks (overexploitation of marginal/fragile areas, abandon of little productive regions (condemned to all sorts of desertification…) and concentration in intensive agriculture areas, condemned to an overexploitation of the environment • Competitiveness and cost of protecting the environment • Worrying perspectives for 2025…

  36. 3.5. What State for what regulation? • The biggest challenge for Morocco: to succeed the transition from a largely extensive and protected agriculture to an intensive, competitive and more open agriculture in the world market, and this at an acceptable political, social and environmental price. • There is no choice but to try to cope the current changes or tu suffer them… • Liberalization of trade exchanges starts with internal reforms and extends to programmed and negotiated opening…

  37. Thanks for your attention

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