Drought: Heavy Fallout for the Grain Sector in Algeria

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The fallout from the low rainfall recorded during the last three winters in Algeria should be heavy for the national cereal sector.

The combine harvest campaign, still underway, is expected to achieve results well below targets. Production is expected to be reduced by 30 to 40 percent for MY 2021-2022, according to a report from the Foreign Agricultural Service (FAS) under the US Department of Agriculture.

The report directly blames the low rainfall, which “reduced soil moisture”, especially in the country’s cereal basins.

Algeria’s overall production is expected to stand at 3.6 million tonnes, for an estimated consumption of 11.1 million tonnes. According to figures released by the President of the Republic last March, the national production of cereals had reached 6.7 million tonnes.

According to USDA forecasts, these conditions will stimulate imports of wheat and barley from Algeria. Total imports are expected to stand at 7.65 million tonnes, including 750,000 tonnes of barley to “supplement weather-related grazing conditions”.

The American agency stresses that this situation arises despite efforts to reduce imports and ensure the country’s food security, recalling that “the Algerian government is working on the development of its agricultural industry by encouraging local investments to improve the soft wheat sectors and oilseeds”.

In July 2020, the President of the Republic announced that agricultural production reached 25 billion dollars in value, “exceeding those of hydrocarbons for the first time since independence”.

Figures nevertheless received with skepticism by experts, arguing that the Ministry of Agriculture did not have reliable data because of the informal nature of a large part of agricultural activity.

“If our agriculture generates 25 billion, it would be much more efficient than that of 2/3 of the member countries of the European Union”, argued, for example, the agronomist Akli Moussouni.

“Increase irrigated areas”

Be that as it may, the performance of Algerian agriculture is dependent on the vagaries of the weather, as confirmed by these forecasts of declining production for the current year after a long period of drought.

Last March, the Head of State raised the issue, insisting on the need to increase irrigated cereal areas by 20%. Tebboune indicated during a meeting with the press that the country had capacities in terms of irrigation means which made it possible to increase national wheat production by 20%.

The objective is to reduce the grain import bill which reached 2.8 billion dollars in 2020 or 34.76% of the country’s overall food bill.

However, the quantities imported only represented 20% of national needs.

The vulnerability of the cereal sector because of its dependence on rainfall is also pointed out by many Algerian experts.

“Our cereal system is weakened by too much dependence on precipitation”, even though “all climate models predict for the region even more aridity and variability of precipitation”, warned, this Wednesday, August 4 on the Algerian radio, Prof. Ali Daoudi, teacher-researcher at the National Agronomic School of Algiers.

He explained that the expected drop in production is “the immediate effect of climatic conditions”, knowing that “it is the same traditional system of cereal production which produced last year nearly 40 million quintals which is likely to produce 25% less this year”.

According to him, “the average yields over the last five years have been around 16 quintals per hectare, which is among the lowest rates in the Mediterranean region.”

The solution he is proposing is the same one suggested by President Tebboune: increasing the irrigated areas.

“Even if we are already struggling to increase supplemental irrigation, we must be more ambitious and consider having structurally, some 200,000 hectares of cereals each year, irrigated, with high yield levels, between 50 and 65 quintals per hectare on average, to stabilize around 20 million quintals of production, this is fundamental if we want to secure market supply,” he advises.