After the oil collapse, Algeria produces half of its consumption from wheat

Algeria produced over 40 million quintals of grains, during the harvest season of 2015, with an increase of 14.3% compared to last year, as the production volume reached over 34 million quintals, at a time when the estimated annual needs of Algeria from cereals reached about 80 million quintals on average, and this means that the country is forced to import half of its needs from the global markets, Algerian Professional Office of Cereals announced.

General Manager of the National Professional Office of Cereals, said in his interview with the official news agency (APS), that the realization of this quantity is considered the completion of a great success for the country in light of the drought that the country noticed during the last season, especially in the months of April and May; “Compared to the climatic conditions in the country. We have succeeded in avoiding disaster.”

“Algeria will always depend on the import of soft wheat, due to the climatic conditions that are not favorable for the cultivation of this kind of wheat, without the ministry’s efforts to support hard wheat, and barley, since these products are affordable, and Algeria is historically known for being a producer of high-quality wheat.

Grains’ cultivation in Algeria is very active due to the dependence on rainfall, as the current irrigated areas represent only 240,000 hectares of the total 4.3 million hectares, which is 7% of this area.

This comes in light of the suffering of the State from the consequences of the collapse of oil prices, and the decline in the country’s resources, which forced the government to go to the international markets to cover the difference, in the face of the rising domestic consumption ratio, because the failure of the Agriculture and Rural Development Ministry to reach 70 million quintals per year of wheat of both types by 2019, after 14 years of the national plan for rural development, on which the treasury spent 399.7 billion dinars (equivalent to US $ 5.5 billion), in the form of direct assistance to the agricultural sector, which is mostly dominated by semi-peasants, and “mafia” of reclamation and interveners in the sale of fake products, speculators and smugglers.

Many farmers criticize the policy that is exercised by the ministry, through generalizing the support on all those who pretend to belong to the agricultural sector, including the cheaters and searchers of chances to win quotas of the support that is provided by the state from the public money to a sector that was inability to provide potatoes for Algerians.

Official statistics reveal that the lack of support to the real producers and active peasants, caused losses for about 250.000 peasants, during the last two years out of 1.8 million farmers.

Algeria’s imports of grain reached about $ 4 billion annually, which is equivalent to 50% of the annual food imports, despite the fact that 70% of the cultivated areas in Algeria are used in vain for the cultivation of grain, a division which is exposed to a real war by lobbies of import that monopolize the activity of importing the food of Algerians from abroad, since the liberalization of foreign trade in 1992.