The mirage of food security: Big farming in North Africa's deserts

In June 2024, the streets of the small town of Tiaret in Algeria were filled with barricades and raging fires. After weeks without water due to a prolonged and severe drought, residents were fed up with the government’s lack of response. Outside the town, in the countryside, the situation was equally desperate. Farms in this western part of Algeria, which contribute significantly to the national wheat production, were struggling as crops shriveled up from little rain and depleted aquifers.

The situation for Algeria and the entire North African region is expected to only get worse. The region is a hotspot for increased extreme heat, drought and aridity, with the most severe projections of temperature increases reaching 2.6°C by 2065. This will have dramatic impacts on agriculture and pastoralism, exacerbating the region's already massive dependence on food imports. Algeria, for example, imports almost 75% of its cereals, more than half of its milk and almost all the raw materials used in the food industry for the production of edible oils and sugar.

The Algerian government's response to this situation, like several of its neighbours, has been to expand large-scale farming southwards, into the Sahara desert. It involves building large-farms irrigated with underground water reserves. The idea is not new. These type of irrigation projects have been tried in Algeria's desert since as far back as the 1930s, with mixed results and some lasting environmental impacts. But now the government is determined to make it work through partnerships with foreign agribusiness companies.

Claiming the ambitious goal of converting one million hectares of desert into farmland, the Algerian authorities have signed numerous deals with foreign (and some domestic) companies in the past decade (see Table). These deals involve concessions for vast tracts of land, along with incentives and financial support from the Algerian state. In 2022, the government launched a digital platform for agriculture investors and passed an investment law that provides even further incentives to foreign companies. Investors have rushed in, but it is not clear that this will make the country more food secure, especially over the long term.

The biggest project is a US$3.5 billion deal with Qatar’s largest dairy company Baladna. Announced in July 2024, it vows to grow feed crops and raise 280,000 cows on 117,000 hectares in Adrar Province. The farm, ten times larger than the massive Baladna dairy farm in Qatar that it is modelled on, is supposed to decrease Algeria's reliance on milk, especially powdered milk.

But the farm will need over 1.7 trillion litres of water from an aquifer that is not renewable and will be stocked with dairy cows most likely imported from the US[1]. Moreover, even though Algerian banks and the Algerian National Investment Fund will provide three-quarters of the funds for the project, the management of the farm and its board of directors are controlled by Baladna, through its 51% equity stake. Baladna is a "strategic company" of the Qatari government and its stated first priority is Qatar's food security, not Algeria's food needs. While both sides speak about Algeria's food security to the media, the company speaks about a "significant return on investments" to its investors.

Building on this trend of large-scale corporate farms in the Sahara, another massive project there involves the Italian company Bonifiche Ferraresi (BF), a vertically integrated food and agribusiness company with farms around the world. It was allocated a first concession of around 900 hectares in Ouargla Province and then a second for 36,000 hectares in Timimoun. The corporation will farm wheat, lentils and beans and build a pasta factory. Its concessions come with a promise from the government to grant it licenses to dig wells for irrigation. The company managing the project, BF El Djazair Spa, is a joint venture between BF and the Algerian National Investment Fund, with the Italian corporation holding 51% of the shares, and the costs being distributed proportionally. This project is also marketed as a food security initiative for Algeria, but, for BF, it forms part of a larger expansion plan to establish farms outside Italy to supply wheat to its pasta and couscous factories. BF controls 42% of the Italian Seed Company (SIS), which gives it exclusive rights to hundreds of varieties. These include “Capelli” wheat, which originated in North Africa and is particularly prized in the production of Italian pasta. Moreover, since the project in the Algerian desert is part of the Italian government's Mattei Plan (see Box), 30% of its production is to be allocated for export to Italy.

A similar scenario is developing in Egypt, the world's leading wheat importer. One of the Mattei Plan pilot initiatives in the country involves BF to produce wheat, soybean, maize and sunflower on 15,000 hectares in Dabaa.

Under the claim of overcoming food dependence and increasing the export of agricultural products, the government has launched the “Future of Egypt” project, aiming to convert 1.6 million hectares into farmland. The initiative has attracted much criticism, not least for a lack of transparency in its management by the army. The new agricultural production will be irrigated by tapping into non-renewable aquifers in a country that already has an annual water deficit of 7 billion cubic metres. Moreover, the strategy to increase exports by more than 30% between 2021 and 2023 has not prevented the country's food price inflation rate from being among the highest in the world.

Similar to Algeria, Egypt’s agricultural policy favours foreign investors. While restricting farmers from cultivating rice to conserve Nile water, the government grants land and water permits to corporations. This has also attracted Baladna, which signed a US$1.5 billion deal to establish a large scale dairy farm of 20,000 cows across 113,000 hectares in the New Valley Governorate.

For some time, other Gulf investors have also been drawn to Egypt's agricultural land. According to Alternative Policy Solutions, Saudi and Emirati companies hold up to 5% of the total cultivated area. Despite their promises to boost food production for Egypt, these investors primarily benefit from export crops. For instance, the UAE agribusiness corporation Al Dahra is among the top 10 citrus exporters. Those companies often focus on raw materials for their own countries' food supply chains. Due to water scarcity, green fodder production has been banned in Saudi Arabia since 2018, making it a top importer of alfalfa from Egypt, alongside the UAE.

One notable area where alfalfa production has expanded is the Toshka project in the Egyptian desert. Initially funded by an UAE donation of US$100 million, it includes a main water canal to which one-tenth of the country’s quota from the Nile water has been allocated. Both Al Dahra and the Saudi Al Rajhi International for Investment company are estimated to control up to half of the 170,000 hectares covered by the project. Companies' access to land has been characterised by a number of irregularities, illustrating the extent to which the government favours foreign investors. For example, a lawsuit against Al Dahra was filled by the Egyptian Center for Social and Economic Rights for the gross squandering of public funds and the purchase of state land at a price of US$3 per feddan[2] when the average price was US$647. There have also been allegations that these corporations have breached contract clauses which limited alfalfa production to a smaller proportion of land to conserve water resources, and that they are paying below market prices for irrigation water.

Morocco is yet another North African country selling off its dwindling water sources to foreign agribusinesses under the guise of short-term food security. The “Green Morocco Plan” launched in 2008, promotes large-scale agriculture, having already granted over 112,000 hectares to large investors along with offering tax exemptions and subsidies. Morocco, known as a major supplier of tomatoes to the European Union, has also become the world's 15th largest fruit exporter by value, thanks to the expansion of berries, watermelons, avocados and citrus crops.

These developments have been above all detrimental to small-farmers, who face reduced access to irrigation water and often have no choice but to engage in contract farming with corporations. In the oasis near Zagora, for example, the production of watermelons for export has worsened drought conditions, sparking "thirst protests" in 2017 and 2018. The situation is even worse in the region of Souss Massa, where foreign investors have been setting up operations for over a decade. There, greenhouses covering 20,000 hectares produce vegetables and fruits, depleting groundwater reserves so severely that the government had to install a desalination plant. But local farmers find the water from this plant too expensive, leaving only large corporations like the French tomato producer Azura able to afford it in the long term.

Amid a prolonged six-year drought, criticism is mounting over the unsustainability of the Moroccan model. Food security is also not improving in the country, which keeps on importing staple crops and has become the world’s sixth-largest wheat importer. Nonetheless, the government is actively promoting local and foreign investments in farmland across the country as part of its “Green Generation” plan, which aims to double exports by 2030. This initiative extends to the occupied Western Sahara, potentially intensifying its exploitation and subjugation.

The widespread dependence on food imports across North Africa stems from decades of neo-liberal policies, imposed on the region through the structural adjustment programmes of the World Bank and IMF, as well as free trade agreements, particularly with the EU. These policies prioritised the export production of water-thirsty crops and undermined the production of local foods. Yet, despite the evident failure of these approaches and the galloping debt crisis they have generated, the region's governments continue to pursue the same policies. Recent examples include the IMF's US$8 billion loan to Egypt, and the newly signed African Continental Free Trade Agreement (AfCFTA). While these agreements are already making the region a destination for more investments in corporate farming, they are likely to further marginalise small-scale farmers, fishers and pastoralists and increase the region’s dependence on food imports.

There is resistance across the region to this shift toward agribusiness. Local initiatives supporting food systems, such as farmers' cooperatives (Ta'adoudya) based on solidarity and cooperation to local markets, are gaining momentum. Agricultural workers’ trade unions are also organising against labour exploitation by agribusiness, despite facing heavy repression. For these groups, many of whom are part of larger movements like La Via Campesina and the North African Network for Food Sovereignty, the solutions to food dependency and the onslaught of the climate crisis lie in support of local food production and agro-ecology, and an urgent reversal of neoliberal policies and corporate farming.

[1]According to Baladna, the farm's planned production capacity is 1.7 billion litres of milk per year (https://baladna.com/en/baladna-qpsc-signs-an-agreement-with-the-algerian-ministry-of-agriculture). On average, it takes 1,020 litres of water to produce one litre of milk (https://www.waterfootprint.org/resources/Mekonnen-Hoekstra-2012-WaterFootprintFarmAnimalProducts_1.pdf).

[2]A feddan is a unit of area equal to 0.42 hectares and is used in Egypt, South Sudan, Sudan, Syria, and Oman.