A powerful thunderstorm accompanied by flash floods destroyed dozens of hectares of onion fields over the weekend in Kiko, a farming area in Morocco’s Boulemane province, part of the Fès-Meknès region.
Videos and photos shared on Facebook showed entire onion harvests washed away by torrents, leaving farmers devastated as the storm hit just before the end of the harvest season.
Mouha Archoun, a local onion farmer and head of a farmers’ association in Kiko, said the storm inflicted “massive damage” on plots covering dozens of hectares. He told Hespress that losses have yet to be assessed, as local authorities are still responding to the storm’s broader impact across the province. An official committee is expected to be dispatched to survey the destruction.
Archoun warned that the loss of these crops — which were expected to supply the national market with onions until next April — could put pressure on supply in the coming weeks.
While some agricultural professionals downplayed the impact, many farmers are urging authorities to step in quickly and evaluate the damage, noting that they had been counting on the harvest to cover production costs.
The storm came just a week after another thunderstorm with heavy rain and hail struck several areas in Boulemane, particularly the communes of Tisaf and Laraj, also causing extensive agricultural losses.
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