Many Moroccans question the real reason for the unprecedented rise in vegetable prices in recent days, expressing that they are not convinced of the justifications put forward by the government, which attributes the reason to natural factors.
Moroccan consumers are also not convinced that rising fuel prices are responsible for the soaring prices of most vegetables, since the price of tomatoes, which did not exceed 4 dirhams, jumped to 12 dirhams on kilogram.
Many Moroccans question the real reason for the unprecedented rise in vegetable prices in recent days, expressing that they are not convinced of the justifications put forward by the government, which attributes the reason to natural factors.
Moroccan consumers are also not convinced that rising fuel prices are responsible for the soaring prices of most vegetables, since the price of tomatoes, which did not exceed 4 dirhams, jumped to 12 dirhams on kilogram.
By tracing the journey of agricultural products from the farm to the consumer, it can be seen that the main factor driving up prices lies in the marketing system, where agricultural products pass through three stages of sale before reaching the consumer's table.
Its two main actors, the farmer and the consumer, are concerned by this process. Indeed, the farmer sells with a small profit and the consumer buys at a high price. As for the biggest profit from the process, it is the intermediaries.
The first stage of the process of marketing agricultural products begins with their sale by the farmer inside the estate to the first broker, and the latter sells them in the wholesale market with a certain profit margin to the second broker, who at his in turn resells them to the installment merchant, who resells them to the consumer in the final stage of marketing.
And if it is normal for the farmer to sell his product directly on the wholesale market to the seller in installments, thereby ensuring a respectable profit for both parties, and the arrival of the product to the consumer at an acceptable price, then "brokerage "controls the Moroccan market, according to Mohamed Mohdhi, the central general secretary of the Federation of Professional Unions of Morocco. .
Mohdhi explained in a statement to Hespress that the percentage of farmers who sell their products directly to wholesale markets is no more than 10% at best, while most of them sell to intermediaries in the areas. From this point, a spark of rising prices begins.
Mohdhi said that the first middleman who buys the goods from the farmer sells them in the wholesale market, calculating the transportation costs and his profit margin, to another middleman who works only inside the market, before 'it only reaches retailers, then to the consumer. .
Thus, the process of marketing agricultural products, since leaving the farm, passes through three intermediaries, which leads to a 75% increase in the price at which they are sold in the first stage inside the farm, according to the central secretary of the Federation of Trade Unions of Morocco.
Another factor that strongly contributes to the rise in prices of agricultural products is that a large number of large investors in the sector are not farmers, but rather businessmen who have projects in other sectors, and it is the category that prefers to export their products abroad, or sell them directly to intermediaries inside the estate, which Muhammad Mohdhi considered a "very big problem", noting that the small farmer markets his products only in the weekly markets, “as with the big markets, the intermediaries control them”, as he put it.
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