The Ministry of Higher Education and Scientific Research (MERS) is currently considering the national strategy for the development of the cereal sector. In this context, the first manager of the sector, Kamel Baddari, yesterday brought together the working group in charge of reflection on this strategy.
Composed of representatives of the MERS, the Ministry of Energy and the Ministry of Agriculture as well as experts in this sector, this committee’s mission is to look into the development of a strategic plan dedicated to cereal growing. This file is one of the government’s priorities at a time when the issue of food security is acute, particularly with the scarcity of water resources.
This is precisely the case this year, especially since the rains expected to save the cereal campaign are still not there in the wheat and barley producing regions at the end of April. The harvest-threshing campaign has also been exceptionally launched in certain regions of the country because of the high temperatures.
Overall, the whole of the Maghreb is once again affected by a very heavy water deficit this year, which only suggests very poor harvests, and this is the case in Algeria, where cereal production during the previous campaign reached more than of 43 million tons.
Consequently, import requirements are expected to increase for this 2023/2024 season. In the wake of this strong demand, export programs in France have been largely boosted in recent months from Algeria and other countries in the region, according to the latest cereal market outlook report from France Agrimer.
Hence the urgency of setting up a strategy for the sector independently of rainfall by adopting supplementary irrigation, the program drawn up for which purpose has been delayed (currently 1.6 million hectares are irrigated (all cultures combined) But also by ensuring the transition to smart irrigation in a sector which monopolizes 70% of the water resource and in which certain water-consuming sectors are not profitable.
This explains the excessive reliance on imports to cover national needs while prices are rising on the world market. The latest monthly data from the World Bank (WB) available for the period between December 2022 and March 2023 show a 2% increase in the agricultural and cereal price indices even though the latest edition of the System watch bulletin Information on Agricultural Markets (AMIS), published in April 2023, highlights the decline, over the last ten months, in world prices for grains and oilseeds. Because the tensions are still relevant. Combined with water stress, they constitute a threat to global food security.
In this regard, the International Food Policy Research Institute (Ifpri) has looked into the relationship between world wheat reserves and price volatility, highlighting how tensions over stocks over the past 18 months have increased volatility and undermined global food security.
Indeed, after the surge and high volatility in prices that followed the start of the war in Ukraine, wheat prices have gradually returned to their pre-conflict levels over the past six months.
However, their volatility remains high compared to historical trends, a sign of the uncertainties that continue to hang over the wheat markets.
