The 3rd National Fair of Local Products organised by the Regional Chamber of Agriculture of Souss-Massa-Drâa ends this 6 April in Agadir. The objective of this edition is to promote local products and their development potential.
Spread over an area of 3,000 m2, the Agadir Local Products Fair, which began on Thursday and ends this Monday, saw the participation of 150 exhibitors and was enlivened by a series of conferences and tasting sessions.
According to the organisers, including the National Association of the Local Products Fair, this edition, which saw the participation of Tunisia as guest of honour, aims to promote local products and their development potential, to provide a platform for direct sales of products, to draw attention to the importance of this sector, and to serve as a space for the exchange of ideas and experiences.
"This event aims at the application of the guidelines of the Green Morocco Plan concerning the development and promotion of local products," declared Ali Kayouh, president of the Chamber of Agriculture of the Souss-Massa region.
One of the objectives is also to motivate young people to invest in the local products sector and the consolidation of quality, which requires better packaging and product presentation. The contribution of the Souss-Massa-Drâa region to these products, which are part of the 2nd pillar of the Green Morocco Plan, is distributed between cactus, which covers more than 50% of production and surface area nationwide, argan (70%), saffron (99%), and dates (90%). According to figures from the Regional Directorate of Agriculture, local products occupy, in 2015, more than 50,000 hectares for prickly pears, with an annual production of 490,000 t, 1,600 hectares for saffron (5 t). Roses occupy 800 hectares for a production of 1,650 t. As for the argan tree, it occupies nearly 684,000 hectares of argan and produces more than 248,000 t, while henna production is 7,600 t on 1,400 hectares, and finally, the area reserved for date palms is 41,000 hectares which produce 42,000 tonnes of dates.
