Morocco's pepper exports increase in the EU, against Spanish, dutch markets

Morocco’s pepper exports reached 90,390 tonnes in the first half of 2021, compared to 77,720 tonnes in the first half of 2019, an increase of 16%, according to Hortoinfo’s data from the statistical service Euroestacom.

Euroestacom’s data also showed that member countries of the European Union (EU) are buying fewer peppers from Spain and the Netherlands and increasing imports from Morocco and Turkey.

In the first half of the last three years, Spanish pepper sales in the EU have fallen by 34.62 million kilos (-8.77%) and the Dutch by 27.31 million kilos (-21.67% ), while Moroccan pepper has increased by 12.67 million kilos (+ 16.3%) and Turkish by 23.67 million kilos (+60.21%).

Morocco has seen an increase in terms of the peppers export to the EU over the years, with a constant rise in the first six months of each year of the last three years.

The volume of Moroccan peppers sold in the EU in the first half of 2021 increased by 12.67% compared to the sales of the three previous years. In the first half of 2021, Morocco sold 90.39 million kilos of peppers to EU Member States.

This increase in terms of peppers’ exports is due to the fewer use of agricultural pesticides per hectare in the country than in most European countries.

The use of pesticides per hectare in Morocco dedicated to agricultural crops is 1.46 kg per hectare, according to the statistical agency of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) data for 2017.

However, Spain, for example, uses 3.59 kg of pesticides per hectare, and Morocco remains far from China and Japan, which have average pesticide use of 12.61 kg or even 13.07 kg per hectare.

Morocco was placed 13th in the world in terms of pepper production, with a total of 256,000 tonnes, for which it devoted an extension of 5,449 hectares, according to FAO data in 2018.