Agriculture: the sector that has taken up the challenge of food security in independent Algeria

The celebration of the 60th anniversary of national independence is characterized by great performances of the agricultural sector which has succeeded in meeting the challenge of food security and sovereignty, thanks to appreciable yields in strategic sectors, allowing the country to approach self-sufficiency in this area.

After the ember years, during which the Algerians suffered the horrors of French colonialism, and where the majority of them could not meet their most basic food needs, now independent Algeria is classified today in the same way as developed countries in terms of food security.

Confirmation of this performance came from the United Nations World Food Program (WFP), which ranked Algeria as the first country in Africa in terms of food security during the 2018-2020 period.

The only African country to have recorded this performance, Algeria was thus listed in the same category as the majority of European countries, the United States, Canada, China, Russia, Brazil and Australia. , among others.

As a result, the agricultural world, which gained a great deal from the War of National Liberation and from the survival of rural populations through the maintenance of subsistence agriculture and local products, has today become one of the guarantors food security and socio-economic progress of the country.

Since independence, agriculture has been at the heart of national development policies. Among the agricultural plans implemented was the “agrarian revolution” of the 1970s, launched by the late President Houari Boumediene.

The objective was twofold: to achieve food self-sufficiency through the creation of modern farms and to reduce unemployment by allocating land primarily to peasants who did not own it.

The agrarian revolution was also distinguished by the construction of the green dam to fight against soil erosion.

Today, the rehabilitation of this agro-ecological asset is one of the major priorities in the fight against desertification and the effects of climate change.

These efforts made over all these years have borne fruit, by securing the supply of the internal market and therefore reducing the country’s dependence on world markets.

This is how the agricultural sector managed to show strong resilience in 2020 in the face of the economic crisis caused by the coronavirus.

With a production of nearly 3,500 billion Da in 2021, i.e. more than 14% of national GDP, the sector today provides more than 73% of local market needs with export surpluses for some of the 25 sectors that ‘He counts. It also strongly contributes to the diversification of the country’s exports.