The rationale of the Green Morocco Plan: missing links between goals and implementation

Abstract

Morocco began an ambitious agricultural policy called the Green Morocco Plan (GMP) in 2008. This paper analyses the rationale behind the plan, that is, the overall consistency between: (i) the initial assessment of the agricultural sector; (ii) the goals defined for the plan; and (iii) the instruments used to achieve these goals. The analysis is based on a review of policy documents and instruments implemented in the framework of the Plan. The original assessment, which was conducted to frame the Plan, highlighted a dual agricultural sector with traditional and modern farms. The key goals of the GMP are to increase agricultural production and farm income, and to ensure the sustainable development of rural territories. The rationale of the Plan is that, to achieve these goals, public actions should break away from the dual structure of the sector, support investments, and improve the organisation of agricultural value chains. However, this paper shows that the farm typology outlined in the original assessment was in fact inaccurate, and that, in practice, the Plan does not take the diversity of farms into account. Moreover, most of the instruments designed to improve the organisation of agricultural value chains do not give importance to the share of the value added that benefits farmers, and most of the instruments of the plan do not take the territorial level into account. As a result, the aim of the GMP is to transform rural areas through improved economic performance but, due to inaccuracies in its rationale, its focus is generally limited to enhancing agricultural production.

Keywords:

• agricultural policy
• development project
• farm typology
• Morocco

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. An agricultural value chain is the set of actors involved in the production, processing, and marketing of an agricultural commodity.

2. A ‘favourable rainfed area’ is an area where there is sufficient rainfall to grow many different crops without irrigation. In Morocco, this corresponds to average rainfall of more than 400 mm per year (General Council of Agricultural Development 2009b).