Inflation and drought are causing serious problems for Moroccan farmers, making their labor more challenging as prices for everything from petrol to fertilizer have reached record highs.
“Due to the drought this year, no agricultural was produced. There is no water, the amount of water has much dropped, and the going is quite tough “said Bella El Omari, a farmer in the town of Ain Atiq outside of Rabat.
El Omari predicted that this year’s yields will suffer significantly from the absence of rain.
For the fourth year in a row, Morocco has had little rainfall.
The average national filling rate of Morocco’s major dams was only 29.2% through mid-July 2022, down nearly 50% from the same period in 2021 (45.2%), according to a report by the Ministry of Equipment and Water.
In addition to allocating more than $1 billion to help farmers suffering from drought, the Moroccan government has chosen to undertake a program to conserve water.
This requires the establishment of water distribution flow limitations as well as a ban on the use of drinking water for activities like car washing, swimming pool filling, and irrigating green spaces like golf courses.
Economic researcher Mehdi Fakir stated, “The drought in Morocco has long been considered a contextual problem but is a structural one, and today it has become important to deal with it accordingly.”
According to the World Bank, three consecutive years of drought serve as a sharp reminder of how vulnerable Morocco’s economy is to increasingly variable rainfall levels.
The effects of the drought, exacerbated by the conflict in Ukraine, emphasize Morocco’s vulnerability to changes in the global environment and the prices of commodities.
Fakir believes that the need for an immediate and structural solution to the issue currently plaguing the North African nation is demonstrated by the drought, as well as by the global crises in the wheat and petroleum markets.
“The local infrastructure is impacted by the rise in pricing and the rise in production costs at the global level, which results in domestic inflation,” Fakir said.
As a result of the effects of the coronavirus epidemic disrupting global supply chains and the ongoing conflict in Ukraine driving up energy costs, inflation in Morocco has reached previously unheard-of levels.
As has been the case in many other countries throughout the world, this has led to greater pressure on Moroccans’ purchasing power.
Morocco’s inflation rate, which reached 7.2% in June, was one of the highest since 2008, according to the nation’s planning agency.
