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“The area dedicated to strategic crops is clearly increasing”
Youcef Cherfa from Béjaïa:
The Minister of Agriculture, Rural Development and Fisheries, Youcef Cherfa highlighted, Thursday in Béjaïa, the continuous expansion of areas devoted to so -called strategic cultures, in particular oilseeds. “The area dedicated to strategic crops, especially oilseeds, is clearly increasing,” he said, encouraging, in passing, farms to engage more in the industrial culture of rapeseed and sunflower, while evoking the introduction of soy as a culture of the future.
It was on the sidelines of the launch of the national sunflower harvest campaign for the 2025 agricultural season, from an old pilot closure, now converted into an agricultural production unit, located in the town of Oued Amizour, north of the Soummam valley, during a working visit to the region.
Previously, the Minister laid the first stone of a major project for the construction of 27 strategic silos for the long -term storage of cereals in the commune of Seddouk, south of the wilaya. This complex with a total capacity of 100,000 tonnes is part of the strengthening of the major national program aimed at the creation of 350 proximity centers and 30 large capacity silos, to reach a total of 5 million tonnes of storage across the national territory.
Still in the commune of Seddouk, Youcef Cherfa also inaugurated a local storage hangar which could contain up to 5,000 tonnes, recalling, on occasion, that the realization of these infrastructures is part of a food security policy, aimed at reducing the country’s dependence on imports.
“The wilaya of Béjaïa will benefit from other cereal storage projects in the commune of Kherrata,” he continued.
Also, he called on farmers to get closer to public banking establishments to benefit from the advantages of the recently signed agreement between the ministries of agriculture and finance for the financing of projects to carry out a cold storage space (cold rooms of small and medium capacity).
“This agreement provides for interest-free credits, capped at 15 billion DA, to support the creation of cold and medium capacity chambers, thus contributing to the national food security strategy,” he said.
These are, the Minister, of the Minister without interest to operators, observed to invest in the cold storage sector which also participates in the National Food Safety Strategy Program, recalling, in passing, the other acquired sector, including the sanitation of agricultural land. An operation, he noted, already underway through the wilaya.
At the end of January, the director of enhancement and promotion of agricultural products at the Ministry of Agriculture, Ms. Hanane Labiad, assured, from Bouira, that Algeria has all the means that could ensure its food security and its strategic crops, such as fatty corn and oils, including sunflower, rapeseed and soy.
“Algeria has set itself the objective of achieving, by 2028, a total area of 220,000 hectares of fatty corn, and 300,000 ha of oleaginous,” she said during a regional meeting on the development of strategic cultures, held at the Maison de la culture Ali-Zaâmoum.
Rabah Mokhtari