Tunisia-Cereal harvest down to 15.3 million quintals

After a record cereal harvest of 24 million quintals during the 2018/19 season, the total production of cereals for the 2019-2020 season has fallen considerably to reach around 15.340 million quintals, according to final estimates from the Ministry of Agriculture, water resources and fishing.

A production which is distributed between 9.585 million quintals of durum wheat (against 13.3 million quintals last year), 841 thousand quintals of soft wheat (against 2.7 million quintals), 4.654 million quintals of barley (against 6.481 million quintals) and 260 thousand quintals of triticale (against 410 thousand quintals).

According to these same estimates, the harvest of the cereal harvest is estimated at between 7 and 8 million quintals, against 12.9 million quintals during the 2018/2019 season.

This drop-in harvest is due to climatic conditions with almost zero rainfall for two and a half months, which impacted production in major crop regions such as Kef, Siliana, Zaghouan, etc.

The areas affected by the rainfall deficit during the 2019/2020 season are of the order of 376 thousand hectares out of a total of 1.160 million hectares. A list of areas affected by drought has been drawn up by the services of the Ministry of Agriculture to serve as a basis for rescheduling farmers’ seasonal debts.

A government decree fixing the areas of crops affected by drought for the 2019/2020 agricultural season will have to be published soon. Which decree concerns 11 cereal producer governorates namely Bizerte, Béja, Jendouba, Zaghouan, Nabeul, Ben Arous, Manouba, Kef, Siliana, Kairouan and Kasserine.