The recent rains in the Sahara have made the desert green again, to the great joy of the herders. Pastures are now green, but for how long?
Some of the meat consumed in Algeria comes from Spain, France, New Zealand, Brazil, Mali or Niger. So much so that livestock farming chains are being organized abroad to meet the appetite of Algerian consumers.
The imagination of breeders and European circuits has no limits, both in supplying the Algerian market and those of the southern Mediterranean countries with a structural deficit concerning red meat.
Meat whose production of one kilogram requires up to 15,000 liters of water used to irrigate the fodder and other concentrates needed by the animals
In 2015, in a report, the French Livestock Institute indicated that imports from Algeria mainly consisted of carcasses from India (85%) and Brazil (15%) or live animals mainly from France and Spain (around 50,000 heads in total). Disease risks have recently dried up the import of live animals, particularly from France.
One of these import channels is the one that existed from Spain and which is highlighted by the French daily La Montagne on the occasion of the Livestock Summit currently taking place in Clermont-Ferrand (France).
Specialization of Spanish breeders
It was David Girardon, one of the Bigard group’s cattle purchasing managers, who “put his foot in it” through his statements. The Bigard group has nothing to do with a certain French general of infamous reputation during the Algerian War: Marcel Bigeard.
The Bigard group is the leading French slaughterer in terms of its beef purchases. And its presence at this important trade fair aims to secure its purchases. The group’s representative clearly states: “Our presence underlines our desire to show that the upstream is important. If there are no animals, there is no Bigard. It’s as simple as that.”
It was by invoking the need to deal with the drop in the French supply of young cattle for fattening that the supply chains for the Algerian market were discussed.
He is outraged by the situation that has prevailed for many years: “You have 900,000 young calves and 400,000 dairy calves that are valued outside our borders. The idea is to take some of them to finish them off here. Rather than seeing the Spanish fatten a French calf and sell it to the Algerians, we have a card to play to gain market share from Turkey to Morocco.”
David Girardon thus reports on the Spanish sector which, in recent years, has partly specialized in supplying meat to the Algerian market.
Spanish livestock cooperatives had specialized in importing dairy calves of a few weeks old and 300 kg young cattle to entrust them to their specialized breeders to export them on the hoof to Algeria.
Meat from French calves fattened in Spain before being sold to Algeria
Already in 2014, in the French magazine Réussir Bovins Viande, a good connoisseur of the Algerian market testified about the practices of Spanish breeders: “They buy eight-day-old crossbred calves from Eastern countries (Romania, Austria, Poland, Czech Republic) or from Ireland and Scotland, which arrive in Spain at 100 euros each. They raise them up to 480 kg, then ship them to Algeria.”
As for the livestock specialist, Bernard Griffou, he highlighted in the same specialist journal the risk of “competition from Spanish, Polish and Hungarian calves” for the French sector.
He noted for the year 2013 the rise in power of the Spanish sector having “exported 8,000 to 10,000 cattle (excluding breeding stock) to Algeria”.
This success of the Spanish sector was explained at the time by an abundance of pastures but also by the know-how of local farmers in raising milk-fed calves.
They had specialized in this niche where any error results in a high mortality rate of calves just a few weeks old.
As for the French Livestock Institute, the magazine Réussir reported its analysis: “The day when Algeria has a political interest in opening its borders to Polish, Hungarian or other calves, there is a chance that they will establish themselves, as they did in Turkey.”
Various constraints
It appears that European breeders, whether from Eastern countries or the Iberian Peninsula and France, have climatic conditions that favor the presence of natural pastures and significant fodder production.
Added to this is the expertise of breeders and consumer demand in butchery, enabling the best cuts of meat to be used on a carcass.
Current climate disruptions are disrupting this situation. The constant spread of Epizootic Hemorrhagic Disease (EHD) in France can be explained by the rise in temperatures which would favor the biting midge vector of this disease.
Furthermore, faced with an exceptional drought and a lack of fodder, a trend is emerging in Spain among breeders specializing in fattening: the importation of heavier French animals.
Thus, the fattening period is reduced and is in line with their fodder availability.
In this sense, in Algeria, the absence of imports of animals weighing less than 350 kg allows breeders to save on fodder. However, it remains to be studied the interest of a possible import of dairy calves, which in poultry farming is equivalent to raising chicks.
Currently, the Algerian cattle fattening sector must cope with the cessation of imports of live animals following the appearance of MHE in France, which is destabilizing breeders who have specialized in this niche.
Alongside the beef cattle sector, the sheep sector in Algeria comprises 18 million heads and provides income for many farming families.
A sheep sector is coming back to life with the steppe pastures becoming green again with the rains that have fallen in recent days in several regions of Algeria.
These two sectors must deal with the one that supplies white meat. Between these two sectors, competition is tough regarding the use of corn; the poultry sector relies on grain corn while the other relies on silage corn to supplement pastures. A poultry sector that offers meat that is much more accessible to low-income households.
