Investors benefiting from agricultural concessions in the Algerian Sahara will have to present their cultivation plan for the next three years.
With this measure, Algeria aims to increase its agricultural production in strategic sectors while certain investors are tempted by crops considered more profitable.
This decision was taken at a time when Algeria had just validated two major agricultural investments in the Sahara: the creation of a giant farm with the Qatari Baladna to produce powdered milk in the Adrar region and an integrated project in wheat production with the Italian group Bonifiche Ferraresi (BF) in Timimoun.
This measure was announced by the Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development, Youcef Cherfa on Saturday, July 20, during a meeting with ” public operators and beneficiaries of large areas in the southern wilayas”, notes the APS agency.
It was in the presence of the directors of agricultural services of the southern wilayas, the national representative of the Union of Algerian Agronomists (UNA), and executives of the sector, that the ” agricultural plans for each zone for the next three seasons ” were developed, underlines the same source.
In the future, each operator should commit ” in the form of performance contracts, specifying the areas allocated to each crop as well as the expected yield per hectare. “
Saharan agriculture: mandatory three-year cultivation plans
The implementation of these cultivation plans should begin this July and concerns cereals, oilseeds, legumes, and corn. These are the strategic crops that Algeria has decided to develop to reduce its dependence on imports and ensure its food security.
Grain corn is sown in July and is therefore the first to be affected. This crop was the subject of a decision at a Council of Ministers in mid-July. It was thus decided to give priority to the production of grain corn at the expense of silage corn.
Algeria imports 4.5 million tons of grain corn annually for a value of 900 million dollars and mainly uses it for poultry farming. A sector that allows the production of white meat, a more accessible product than lamb or beef, in Algeria.
Traditionally, in the Algerian Sahara, the areas under silage corn are significantly higher than those under grain corn. The selling price of round bales of silage is free while the price of a quintal of corn purchased by the National Office of Livestock Feed (ONAB) is regulated and set at 5,000 DA per quintal.
According to data from the El Menia Chamber of Agriculture, at an average yield of 50 quintals, the gross product of one hectare of grain corn is 250,000 DA compared to nearly 540,000 DA in the case of silage corn. The average yield is, in fact, 37 tons and the selling price is 14,500 DA per ton.
Growing silage corn is all the more interesting for operators because its cycle is only 80 to 90 days, which means it can be grown from July after a first wheat crop. This is more difficult to achieve in the case of grain corn, whose cycle is 130 to 150 days.
Three-year cultivation plans: priority to strategic products
In the case of the wilaya of El Menia, a large part of this silage is intended for dairy farms, whose production is purchased by dairies in Ghardaïa. These produce various dairy products (yogurt, dairy desserts, fermented milk), whose sales prices are free, unlike the price of a liter of milk.
Investors also produce alfalfa and various fodder under pivot for sale at a free price or for their own sheep and camelid breeding, the sale price of which is also free.
Delighted, a breeder confided to Ennahar TV: ” The ewes have two lambs per year and are fed entirely on fodder produced under pivots .” Defiantly, he said: ” If breeders were granted drilling and pivot permits, the region could supply a large part of Algeria with meat .”
Another investor says he has boreholes and pivots, which allow him to raise 2,000 sheep and nearly 500 dromedaries. He adds that he hopes to reach 20 pivots to raise 10,000 sheep.
The investor says he has contacts with breeders in Mali and Niger and says that if he had the necessary permits, he could import animals, fatten them and supply the north of the country. ” We can easily go to Oran or Algiers by road,” he adds.
The investor even uses a pivot ramp to irrigate the bare desert soil after he has seeded it with white truffle (Terfass) spores. He says he is inspired by a cultivation process he observed during his travels in Saudi Arabia and Qatar.
He thus harvests white truffles, a product with a very good return. A kilo of truffle is sold for between 15,000 and 25,000 DA in Algeria. A production that supplements the income from his sheep and camel breeding.
Growing wheat, corn grain, oilseeds, and pulses or growing corn silage, alfalfa with lamb farming, or even white truffles? Some investors seem to have made their choice.
Faced with food imports of around 10 billion annually, it seems that through the decision of three-year cultivation plans, Algeria wants to ensure that investors benefiting from agricultural concessions focus primarily on the cultivation of strategic products for the country’s food security.
