The Minister of Agriculture, Maritime Fisheries, Rural Development and Water and Forests, Mohamed Sadiki, admitted on Monday, April 11, 2022 in Rabat, that the current stock of cereals and basic products will not be sufficient to deal with the uncertain geopolitical situation attributed to the war in Ukraine. He thus declared, in response to Parliament to an oral question on “securing the strategic stock of food products”, posed by the Justice and Development group in the House of Representatives, that the government is in the process of implementing a vision to create a national and integrated ecosystem of the strategic stock of commodities, in application of the royal orientations.
Mr. Sadiki explained that his Department has set up a team dedicated to identifying the products concerned by this stock and the measures that will be put in place to ensure “food sovereignty”. These products, according to the Minister, consist of two categories. The first concerns the basic products that national production does not allow to cover, namely cereals, sugar and edible oils, while the second concerns agricultural inputs, in particular seeds, nitrogen fertilizers and pesticides that are not produced locally. He also underlined that while waiting to set the final vision of this project and the mechanisms capable of ensuring its implementation, the Ministry of Agriculture has begun, jointly with the Ministry of Finance, to from this month, the gradual build-up of a reserve stock of soft and durum wheat. This stock, which is added to the available stock covering five months, he said, will be made available to the National Interprofessional Office for Cereals and Legumes (ONICL), according to the legal mechanism available to it, and will be liquidated according to the situation and in coordination with professionals in the field.