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Data from the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) reveal some worrying trends over the past years.
Rabat – Morocco’s post-COVID economic difficulties have had dire consequences for middle and lower income Moroccans, with food availability on the decline, while hunger and expensive food imports continue to rise.
Data from the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) reveal some worrying trends over the past years that have a severe impact on the daily life of average Moroccans.
While the World Bank shows that Morocco’s GDP has continued to grow and big business is thriving, the country’s severe inflation crisis has led to worrying statistics.
The rise in the cost of consumer goods and food has not just deflated Moroccans disposable income, but for those who are most economically-challenged it has led to rising undernourishment. This trend threatens to undermine Morocco’s decades-long success in combating domestic undernourishment, which stood at 1.3 million in the 2017-2019 period.
Those statistics started moving in the wrong direction once the COVID-19 pandemic hit. The next year, the number of undernourished people rose to 1.5 million. The next year, it rose to 1.9 million, followed by 2.4 million the next year. Now, it has risen to 2.6 million, showing that the rise in undernourishment is growing at a slower pace, but it is still growing.
To what degree this extreme rise in undernourishment is leading to moderate or severe food insecurity is unclear, as the FAO has no data available on this topic.
One other worrying trend is the average protein supply available to Moroccans, and the amount of meat, dairy, fish or eggs that Moroccans can afford to consume. Both trends show a marked decline after years of improvement.
Moroccans could afford 102.4 grams of protein per day in the 2017-2019 period, but this has steadily fallen over the years. At the start of the pandemic this statistic had fallen to 101.6 grams, and continued to fall to 99.2 grams this year. The same has happened with the ability to afford meat, dairy, fish or egg. Before the crisis, Moroccans could afford to eat 31.8 grams of products of animal origin per day, but now this has fallen to 29.2 grams.
The Moroccan government faces a difficult situation, as the population continues to grow, while the available farmland has barely grown since 1979. Meanwhile agricultural exports account for more than one-fifth of the country’s much-needed foreign currency exchange, which it needs for its massive energy imports.
Meanwhile Morocco’s water-intensive agricultural exports (tomatoes, avocados, citrus fruits and berries) continue to grow amid a growing water crisis. The USDA has highlighted that Moroccan fruit exports have doubled between 2016 and 2021, and Morocco is now the world’s fourth-largest exporter of tomatoes.
At the same time, Morocco imports more than $610 million worth of food from the US, and the Russia-Ukraine conflict revealed the country’s dependence on foreign suppliers of cereals and wheat needed to produce bread, a staple in nearly all Moroccan dishes.
In order to combat the nutritional consequences of Morocco’s inflation crisis, the FAO recommends several policies to combat growing food insecurity.
One of those recommendations, Morocco has already implemented by growing the availability of fertilizers in order to boost agricultural production. The second recommendation focuses on modernizing agriculture, which is the primary focus of Moroccan organizations and top universities such as UM6P.
The FAO further recommends that the government strengthen its policy frameworks in order to prioritize food security and sustainable agriculture; as well as boosting programs to promote better nutrition intake and social protection programs.