President of the Republic Abdelmadjid Tebboune stressed Tuesday the importance of the cereal industry to meet the country’s food security, adding that Algeria, through its potential and assets, is able to achieve food self-sufficiency by 2024-2025.
“I think we are not far from achieving food autonomy. We still have a few steps to go and we will surely reach it without any constraints. We will reach self-sufficiency by 2024-2025,” said President Tebboune in his speech at the opening of the national agriculture conference on the theme “Agriculture: for sustainable food security”, stressing that the independence of political decisions in countries is dependent on ensuring their food security.
President Tebboune welcomed the positive results achieved in recent years by the agricultural sector, which “contributed more than 14.7% to the GDP in 2022, where the value of agricultural production reached nearly 4550 billion DA, an increase of 38% compared to 2021.
Food needs are covered by national production at a rate of 75%, the President of the Republic said, adding that the agricultural sector currently employs more than 2.7 million workers.
The President of the Republic spoke of the modernisation of the sector, stressing the need to provide accurate figures on cereal production.
“The state, which intends to regain its economic strength, particularly in the agricultural sector, must provide accurate figures,” he said, arguing that the government’s emphasis on “statistics does not mean that we want to increase taxes, but it is to develop strategies.
Regarding the cereal sector, the President of the Republic affirmed that Algeria “is able to produce, by exploiting all its potential, a minimum of 60 quintals/hectare on average”, adding that the sector can “produce significant quantities of cereals, mainly in the south”.
Stressing the imperative of achieving “a breakthrough in the agricultural sector”, President Tebboune called on the Ministry of Agriculture ” to be active and to engage farmers so as not to miss out on the available opportunities”.
Algeria “is on the verge of achieving food sovereignty and has only a few steps left to take to reach self-sufficiency by 2025,” he said.
He added that for the vegetable and fruit sector, significant efforts are made even for the production of exotic fruits, stressing, however, the need to find “a definitive solution for the problem of agricultural land and to focus on the diversification of production in the various agricultural sectors to increase the income of the agricultural sector and consequently our reserves.
Among the indicators of deployed efforts on the ground, the President of the Republic adds, the achievement by the Algerian farmer of a good productivity in many sectors such as the argan, rapeseed, olive oil, sugar and other sectors, stressing the importance of reaching self-sufficiency and moving towards export.
President Tebboune encouraged young people to move into agriculture as part of start-ups, saying that “the doors are open to young university graduates specialising in the field to put their ideas into action”.
Stressing the need to “put in place a consumption strategy for agricultural products through storage in refrigerated chambers”, the President of the Republic maintained that farmers in Algeria have achieved a good yield in the cultivation of potatoes, hence the “stability of prices for the product”.
Regarding forest resources, President Tebboune said that “the revival of the green dam is an important idea, but nothing prevents, he said, that its rehabilitation is done with agricultural products, highlighting the imperative of mastering livestock breeding through the “exploitation of grasslands and the use of modern techniques while examining the possibility of improving breeds.
