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Rabat – Stakeholders from a wide range of sectors have been pledging efforts and introducing measures to contribute to Morocco’s sustainable goals, including fertilizer giant OCP Group.
The group has launched several initiatives throughout the year to help Morocco’s agricultural produce and directly help farmers develop their farming skills to better treat their soils.
One of the many initiatives is the Al Moutmir program, which has been effective since 2018 to help farmers’ needs through innovative solutions seeking to serve the country’s food security.
The initiative’s goal is to bring together research and innovation, covering the entire value chain from soil needs and tailored fertilizer formulation to farmer support.
Al Moutmir initiative works with stakeholders, including Morocco’s Ministry of Agriculture to ensure farmers have access to solutions that contribute to developing and improving soil health.
Speaking numbers
OCP has shed light on the important statistics and journeys the initiative has offered to farmers since its establishment.
The presentation came as Morocco celebrates the largest Agriculture Fair, which opened in Meknes this week, bringing international exhibitors, representatives, and participants to discuss different themes, including agricultural challenges and water scarcity.
OCP’s outlook on Al Moutmir stressed how the initiative introduced over 3,500 tailor-made formulas that were applied by farmers using smart blender technology since 2019.
This program has directly supported over 40,000 farmers since its launch, while indirectly reaching over 540,000 to offer digital solutions.
Spanning 43 provinces, the Al Moutmir team includes young agronomists, which expanded to include over 40 agronomists and agricultural technicians by 2024.
The outlook stressed the importance of the University of Mohammed VI Polytechnic (UM6P) and its efforts to help the initiative achieve its goals.
“UM6P mobilizes its human and technical resources to support farmers and help them carry out diagnoses based on scientific foundations,” the outlook reads, adding that seven mobile laboratories travel across the country to conduct free soil analysis; this is in addition to UM6P labs in Benguerir.
Since the launch of the Al Moutmir initiative, over 167,400 soil analyses have been carried out– covering over 560,000 hectares.
Now, Al Moutmir Program seeks to adopt more advanced technologies to carry on with its ambitious initiatives. The program’s team is now testing Laser Induced Breakdown Spectroscopy, which allows the analysis of a high volume of soil samples.
The technology also aims to lower costs to further help farmers with their objectives.
The outlook also referred to the phygital smart-packaging solution developed by the UM6P ecosystem startup SensThings, which enables the tracking of NPK-blend fertilizer bags on the local market.
The project alone equips 50 kilograms of fertilizer bags with electronic chips that contain data like blend formula, manufacturer, destination region, among others.
“Once scanned, the bags can be authenticated and traced, ensuring the farmer receives genuine products,” the report said, noting that over one million bags have been produced for the 2024-2025 agricultural season.
Beyond soil development, OCP Ntricorps and Moroccan fertilizer manufacturers, distributors also launched a project with GPS-Maroc to map fertilizer points of sale across the country in real time.
“The Moroccan market now fully consumes fertilizers using Bulk-Blending technology,” the report celebrates. It pledged that Al Moutmir will continue to offer a tailored support program, especially for smallholder farmers via different platforms. The program’s ultimate ambition is to help its beneficiaries adopt good agricultural and effective practices to guarantee vegetative growth, climate resilience, as well as water use efficiency, the report stressed.
The program has deployed 29,320 platforms to serve different sectors, including cereals and legumes, olives, tree crops, vegetables, forage maize, oilseeds, and quinoa.
“These platforms support crop diversification, technical innovation, and knowledge sharing,” the report said, citing 16 open innovation labs.
Training and more
The Al Moutmir initiative’s programs and offers also include tailor-made training that supports farmers, cooperatives, and youth.
Through training, beneficiaries receive guidance from agronomists, who carry out field visits as well as field schools to promote “seeing is believing” learning methods.
According to the report, over 17,500 training sessions have been delivered through classes and field schools.
The program also released over 120 videos under a series seeking to help farmers learn know-how and best practices for soil.
In addition, the program launched Agripedia, an online agronomic knowledge platform to serve farmers with library guides, reports, and multimedia content tailored to their needs, of farmers, agronomists, as well as students.
Commitment toward livestock population
Morocco has been acknowledging challenges, extending to affect the country’s livestock. Due to the ongoing drought crisis and severe lack of rainfall, Morocco has taken bold measures such as canceling the ritual of Eid Al Adha sacrifice and banning the slaughter of female sheep and goat to address the notable decrease in livestock population.
Meanwhile, OCP has expressed its commitment to contributing to Morocco’s drought-mitigating measures through different initiatives.
Earlier this year, Al Moutmir launched a new program dedicated to animal production to support livestock farmers through a service offering that combines technical advice, feed ration formulation, as well as and optimization of livestock practices.
“Two pilot zones have been activated in the Rhamna and Sidi Bennour regions,” the report reads, noting that this comes in collaboration with institutional, local, and private stakeholders.
