The pandemic and the water price crisis due to the war in Ukraine have submitted to the center of the debate the problem of food security in the country.
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Youssef Hammouda and his wife Samira supervise sorting seeds in their Zaghouan farm, in northern Tunisia. Faced with sieve, it is necessary to dexterity and patience to separate the wheat “Mahmoudi” from other seeds and weeds. This local seed that has been transmitted to Youssef by his family is valuable, “healthier and more robust” than imported varieties, depending on the farmer.
It has distributed to other farmers in the region and sells part of its wheat to a cooperative of two hundred women, Lella Kmar Beya, which transform it into traditional couscous and organic. “We have never used fertilizer because the seed is of good quality and resists climate hazards,” he says.
Such a production circuit has become rare in Tunisia. Considered, in Antiquity, as the “Grenier de Bé of Rome”, the country today imports 50% of its cereal needs, including 84% of tender wheat, used for the manufacture of bread, and nearly 50% Durum wheat, for that of couscous. This dependence on the external markets had been felt during the CVIV-19 crisis, because of the closure of borders and the disruption of global food trade. It is again pregnant: Ukraine at war is one of the main exporters of wheat and cereals to Tunisia and the global rise in the course accentuates concerns around stocks, making fear for food security in the coming months .
“Multiply local varieties”
The peasant seeds, because they are well adapted to the Tunisian terroir, are put forward as one of the alternatives to better deal with this kind of shock, and return to a more adapted agriculture for climate change. They will not be able to fully replace the imported products, but “the debate must be revived on the need to cultivate and multiply these local varieties,” Karim Daoud, farmer and a member of the Synagri, the second agricultural union of the country.
Chair of the Tunisian Association for Permaculture, Rim Mathlouthi also had, since 2014, for the rehabilitation of seeds that once made the wealth of Tunisian soil. “We do pedagogy, we make farmers like Youssef visible and we put them in touch with others at the annual peasant seed party,” she explains. “The goal is to preserve agriculture that has virtually disappeared in the 1970s because of the arrival of foreign hybrid seeds, allegedly more efficient, but very demanding fertilizer and other inputs.”
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