Morocco Shifts Away from French Wheat Imports Amid Global Competition

According to Alexandre Marie, chief analyst for Agritel (Argus Media France), France should export 4.3 million tons of soft wheat to Algeria and Morocco in 2023/2024, which would represent 45% of exports for the current campaign that will end by June 2024. These figures remain well below the more than 7 million tons regularly recorded during the period from 2013/2014 to 2019/2020, explained the expert in a recent interview with the agricultural news daily Terre-Net, cited by Agence Ecofin.

France will have to reconquer these two traditional markets if it wants to achieve its forecasts, warns the manager, specifying that Morocco, through the National Interprofessional Office of Cereals and Legumes (ONICL), revised its wheat import policy last July to encourage industry professionals to move away from French wheat in favor of Black Sea suppliers, including Russia. The same is true in Algeria, which since 2021 has modified its tolerance rate for stink bugs, favoring supply from the Black Sea and mainly Russia.

"Between May and July, French wheat was not competitive. Far from it. The spreads sometimes exceeded $40/tonne in favor of the Russian origin. French wheat was unable to fill export order books to third countries. But the situation has been changing for a few weeks, with on the one hand work to improve the price of the French origin and a rise in Russian prices linked to harvest delays, internal logistics tensions and the insurance premium on freight that is regaining momentum due to maritime insecurity," added Alexandre Marie.