Farmers across Morocco’s Oriental region are getting a visit this autumn, not from buyers, but from surveyors. The regional agriculture directorate has rolled out a sweeping, geo-located census of every almond orchard in the territory, an unprecedented stock-take of a crop that has quietly become one of the region’s most important agricultural assets.
The count spans the provinces of Oujda-Angad, Berkane, Taourirt and Jerada, the region’s main production basins, and aims to build a precise database covering planted area, tree health, cultivated varieties and the yield potential of each plot. Officials also want to document the obstacles growers face day to day, from irrigation gaps to aging orchards and limited access to modern cultivation techniques.
The numbers already on hand explain the urgency. Almond orchards cover more than 40,000 hectares in the Oriental region, around 26 percent of all the land there planted with fruit trees, trailing only olive groves. Nationally, the region accounts for roughly 20 percent of Morocco’s almond-planted area and 23 percent of total output, figures that place it among the country’s leading almond-growing territories.
The crop, well suited to the rain-fed and semi-arid land that covers much of the Oriental region, has expanded sharply since the launch of the Plan Maroc Vert and, later, the Green Generation strategy. Between 2008 and 2020, planted area surged 188 percent, climbing from 14,600 to more than 42,000 hectares, while production nearly doubled to 31,000 tonnes, up 93 percent. Roughly 25,000 additional hectares have since been planted under regional farm development projects, alongside new processing units built specifically for cracking and adding value to the almond harvest.
For regional officials, the census is more than bookkeeping. It is meant to sharpen how support programs are targeted, steer investment toward plots with the strongest potential, and help the sector adapt to increasingly erratic rainfall. That matters because the almond tree, relatively drought-tolerant compared with many other orchard crops, is emerging as a resilience strategy in its own right for rural communities across the region, and as a steady source of income for thousands of smallholder farmers.
