Avocado: the green gold that is draining Morocco

A mature avocado tree requires between 1,000 and 1,300 mm of rain per year and an avocado consumes about 1,000 liters of water per kilogram, compared to only 600 liters for an orange for example, explains Ahmed Talhi, a Moroccan expert in environment and sustainable development.

Most small avocado producers set up irrigation systems to exploit surface water (lakes, rivers or dams), thus depleting the groundwater table, which has difficulty renewing itself due to the scarcity of rainfall, the expert develops.

In recent years, the level of the groundwater table has dropped considerably in many regions of the kingdom, added Ahmed Talhi, specifying that it would be difficult to establish a link between this drop in the groundwater table and the expansion of avocado cultivation in Morocco.

An anonymous agricultural expert, for his part, called for avoiding comparing the cultivation of avocado to that of other water-consuming crops such as watermelon, stressing that avocado is a tropical fruit, while watermelon is grown only during certain periods.