France is by far Morocco’s largest customer with 51% of production sold abroad. The Moroccan tomato thus beats the French and Spanish, but voices are being raised to ban its importation.
The war against Moroccan tomatoes is intensifying in France. This is evidenced by the BFMTV article titled “+40% imports in 5 years: Moroccan tomatoes in the crosshairs of French producers”. “For months now, tomatoes, and more precisely those from Morocco, have been in the crosshairs of French producers. In June, raids were already organized in certain major retail chains. In Arles in Bouches-du-Rhône in particular, local producers broke into an E. Leclerc to stick “ Origine Maroc ” labels on punnets of cherry tomatoes sold for 95 cents,” writes the author of the article, emphasizing that “the attraction of distribution” for Moroccan tomatoes “obviously does not date the post-Covid inflationary surge”.
He will specify: “relatively stable between 2011 and 2017 at 300,000 tonnes per year, imports of Moroccan tomatoes have jumped since then according to Customs figures. They reached more than 425,000 tonnes in 2022, an increase of 40% in just five years. » Morocco has become the third largest exporter of tomatoes on the planet. France is by far its largest customer with 51% of production sold abroad. Next come the United Kingdom (19%) and the Netherlands (11%). Tough competition for Spanish tomatoes which have been declining for 10 years, but also and especially for French tomatoes.
Consequence: Emmanuel Macron’s country is the third largest importer of tomatoes in the world, behind the United States and Germany. “In total, it is estimated that 36% of the annual volumes of fresh tomatoes consumed in France are imported, mainly in winter but increasingly all year round due to the development of a Moroccan, Belgian and Dutch offer competing with production French season”, were alarmed in 2022 by the authors of a senatorial report.
Tomato harvests require a high level of labor mobilization. The hourly wage charged for a worker in Morocco is 0.74 euros compared to 13.64 euros in France, recalls Légume de France. In stores, “on certain products such as cherry tomatoes, the difference translates into spectacular price differences,” it is reported. “The average price in stores for cherry tomatoes from France is 2.4 times higher than from Morocco,” estimates the Breton Chambers of Agriculture website. For cocktail and round tomatoes, the difference is less significant (1.4). This is all the more significant as the market share of cherry tomatoes in French household purchases increased from 7.8% in 2015 to 14.3% in 2020.”
