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Rabat – Morocco remains the largest destination for EU wheat for the 2022/2023 agricultural campaign, according to a report from the European Commission published on Tuesday.
The European Commission’s report shows that in the course of the first four months of 2023, Morocco imported over 4 million tonnes of wheat, up from 1.4 million tonnes a year earlier.
The EU exported close to 16% of its wheat harvest to the North African country by the end of April 2023, up from 6.1% the previous year.
Algeria was the second largest importer of wheat over the same period, with 3.6 million tonnes, making up 14% of the bloc’s harvest, the report indicates.
In third place is Nigeria with 2.2 million tonnes of wheat, and Egypt with 1.6 million tonnes.
The report further shows that France remained the biggest EU soft wheat exporter this season, with 9.16 million tonnes, followed by Romania with 3.49 million, Germany with 3.12 million, Poland with 2.54 million, and Lithuania with 2.26 million.
In the 2022/2023 agriculture season, Morocco has emerged as the largest importer of wheat from the European Union.
This comes as a result of the country experiencing a sharp decline in wheat supplies from eastern Europe and suffering from a severe drought in 2022, which devastated Morocco’s agricultural output.
The 2022 drought was the worst to hit the country in over thirty years and resulted in a 70% loss of annual crop production. Given that grains, particularly wheat, are a staple in the Moroccan diet, the drought has only served to deepen the country’s reliance on wheat imports.
In the first eight months of 2022, wheat imports skyrocketed to MAD 18.8 billion ($1.7 billion), almost double the amount of MAD 9.2 billion ($842 million) recorded during the same period in 2021.
The sharp increase in imports highlights the devastating impact of the drought on the country’s agriculture sector and underscores the urgent need for Morocco to diversify its food supply sources.
