World Bank: Morocco's agricultural success increasingly threatened by recurring drought

Morocco has strengthened its agricultural sector and reduced its reliance on food imports over the past two decades, but increasingly frequent droughts are placing those gains under growing strain, according to a new World Bankreport.

The report, Building Food Security, Creating Jobs: Policy Pathways for the Middle East and North Africa, Afghanistan and Pakistan, describes Morocco as a country of contrasts, noting that it has outperformed much of the region in agricultural growth while becoming one of the countries most exposed to recurring drought.

Unlike most countries in the Middle East and North Africa, Morocco and Jordan were the only two that reduced net food imports as a share of gross domestic product between the 2007-10 and 2019-22 periods. Morocco lowered the ratio by 0.5 percentage points, while it increased across most of the region.

The World Bank attributes this performance to the country’s rapidly expanding agricultural sector. Agricultural value added grew by an average of 5.3% annually over the past two decades, well above Morocco’s overall economic growth rate of 3.2% and more than double the regional average of 2.4%, excluding high-income economies.

However, the report says the droughts that affected Morocco between 2016 and 2023 significantly altered the country’s agricultural landscape. During that period, cereal yields fell by 40%, cultivated land contracted by 44%, and wheat imports increased by around 30% as domestic production struggled to meet demand.

The report also highlights a sharp slowdown in cereal production growth, which declined from an annual average of 1.9%between 1990 and 2013 to just 0.5% between 2013 and 2022. According to the World Bank, the slowdown underscores Morocco’s continued dependence on rain-fed agriculture, leaving crop production highly vulnerable to increasingly erratic weather patterns.

Despite these challenges, irrigation remains one of Morocco’s key agricultural strengths. Although irrigated land accounts for only about 20% of the country’s farmland, it generates more than half of total agricultural value added.

During drought years, irrigated agriculture contributes approximately 75% of the sector’s value added, underscoring its critical role in sustaining production when rainfall declines.

The report also warns of mounting climate-related risks along Morocco’s coastline, where sea level rise and groundwater salinization could contaminate irrigation water, reduce soil fertility, and further challenge agricultural productivity in the years ahead.