08 June 2004
The farming sector in Algeria is currently enjoying a great deal of recovery. Improvements in the country’s finances are helping fund other strategic sectors and agriculture is on the top of the list. The strategic importance of agriculture comes from two critical factors. The first is that a strong agriculture would be less dependent on foreign imports and would result therefore in increased foreign currency savings, and the second is that a strong agriculture sector is labor intensive and thus would create much needed jobs, particularly in economically depressed rural areas.
Algeria has devised a variety of strategies since its independence in 1962 in an effort to boost the profile of the sector. But its efforts have all failed mainly because of political and ideological considerations that have largely undermined the growth of agriculture. From the excessive use of socialist central planning that turned farmers into salaried wage earners, to land management and ownership problems, all experiments of the past decades further worsened the status of agriculture.
But the latest experiment appears to be generating results. The strategy currently being implemented was launched three years ago. The effort is organized under what is referred to as the National Agricultural Development Plan or PNDA. Since its establishment, this program managed to create 705,072 permanent positions. These positions were created to staff some 270,000 agricultural units, such as farms. There are about one million such farming units recorded across the country, most of which are small farming operations. The plan still envisages the establishment of another batch of 500,000 units on the longer term, but up to now the surface concerned by the existing units covers 380,000 hectares of farm land. Micro irrigation where the drip-by-drip method is used to conserve water has been implemented on nearly 91,000 hectares.
All of these actions appear to have paid off and progress is being made. In 2003, agriculture output grew by a strong 23.88% according to analysts. The previous two years, growth was at 8% . These improvements, however, came at a massive price. The investments made in the sector topped Ad 82 billion, or nearly $1.2 billion. While this amount is indeed substantial, agriculture analysts say it is not sufficient and is far below what is being spent elsewhere in other industries.
Apart from the debate over how much money should be invested in farming, agriculture in Algeria still faces some important hurdles with the most important of which being the size of farms. With a population of more than 30 million, farming has to use modern and mass techniques that can only be offered by large-scale operations. In contrast, farms in Algeria are too small because over time inheritance transfers meant further parceling out arable lands. With this and other reasons, farms continued to shrink over time to average 10 hectares for 70% of operating farms.
There is also what is called public domain lands, arable lands owned by the government. These lands have also been split and fractured many times after the restructuring of the socialist villages of the 1970s. Subsequent solutions to the problem of land use and distribution did not create an optimum environment conducive to modern agricultural operations. And then when the state encouraged the establishment of cooperatives, the farmers who benefited from the acquisition of the land decided to divide it among each other making their respective operations virtually unfit for mass production and unprofitable. Authorities are fully aware of this problem and the agriculture minister has himself qualified it as a major “danger to agriculture activity.”
While farm output has made progress in the past three years, Algeria still lacks an agribusiness infrastructure in the downstream fully ready to process what is produced. Agribusiness companies currently operating in Algeria are generally small operations and private sector investment has not followed the growth of demand for processed food. In this sector, officials say the government has no intentions to invest in sectors that must be controlled by private capital. The state it will not engage into a sector that depends on not only treating farm products but also packaging it, distributing it and market it.
The farming sector in Algeria is currently enjoying a great deal of recovery. Improvements in the country’s finances are helping fund other strategic sectors and agriculture is on the top of the list. The strategic importance of agriculture comes from two critical factors. The first is that a strong agriculture would be less dependent on foreign imports and would result therefore in increased foreign currency savings, and the second is that a strong agriculture sector is labor intensive and thus would create much needed jobs, particularly in economically depressed rural areas.
Algeria has devised a variety of strategies since its independence in 1962 in an effort to boost the profile of the sector. But its efforts have all failed mainly because of political and ideological considerations that have largely undermined the growth of agriculture. From the excessive use of socialist central planning that turned farmers into salaried wage earners, to land management and ownership problems, all experiments of the past decades further worsened the status of agriculture.
But the latest experiment appears to be generating results. The strategy currently being implemented was launched three years ago. The effort is organized under what is referred to as the National Agricultural Development Plan or PNDA. Since its establishment, this program managed to create 705,072 permanent positions. These positions were created to staff some 270,000 agricultural units, such as farms. There are about one million such farming units recorded across the country, most of which are small farming operations. The plan still envisages the establishment of another batch of 500,000 units on the longer term, but up to now the surface concerned by the existing units covers 380,000 hectares of farm land. Micro irrigation where the drip-by-drip method is used to conserve water has been implemented on nearly 91,000 hectares.
All of these actions appear to have paid off and progress is being made. In 2003, agriculture output grew by a strong 23.88% according to analysts. The previous two years, growth was at 8% . These improvements, however, came at a massive price. The investments made in the sector topped Ad 82 billion, or nearly $1.2 billion. While this amount is indeed substantial, agriculture analysts say it is not sufficient and is far below what is being spent elsewhere in other industries.
Apart from the debate over how much money should be invested in farming, agriculture in Algeria still faces some important hurdles with the most important of which being the size of farms. With a population of more than 30 million, farming has to use modern and mass techniques that can only be offered by large-scale operations. In contrast, farms in Algeria are too small because over time inheritance transfers meant further parceling out arable lands. With this and other reasons, farms continued to shrink over time to average 10 hectares for 70% of operating farms.
There is also what is called public domain lands, arable lands owned by the government. These lands have also been split and fractured many times after the restructuring of the socialist villages of the 1970s. Subsequent solutions to the problem of land use and distribution did not create an optimum environment conducive to modern agricultural operations. And then when the state encouraged the establishment of cooperatives, the farmers who benefited from the acquisition of the land decided to divide it among each other making their respective operations virtually unfit for mass production and unprofitable. Authorities are fully aware of this problem and the agriculture minister has himself qualified it as a major “danger to agriculture activity.”
While farm output has made progress in the past three years, Algeria still lacks an agribusiness infrastructure in the downstream fully ready to process what is produced. Agribusiness companies currently operating in Algeria are generally small operations and private sector investment has not followed the growth of demand for processed food. In this sector, officials say the government has no intentions to invest in sectors that must be controlled by private capital. The state it will not engage into a sector that depends on not only treating farm products but also packaging it, distributing it and market it.
© The North Africa Journal 2004
