Algerian Farmers in ‘State of Shock’ After Week of Deadly Fires

Smoldering ash has replaced thou­sands of hectares of for­est, veg­e­ta­tion and crop­lands in north­ern Algeria.

A full week of rag­ing wild­fires has ended, leav­ing dozens of casu­al­ties and hun­dreds of burned houses. Many olive groves have lit­er­ally dis­ap­peared in the north­ern region of Kabylia, the heart of Algerian olive farm­ing, and the area most hit by the fires.

According to LeMonde, the local author­i­ties have now declared the end of the emer­gency oper­a­tions. They esti­mate that the wild­fires have affected 26 of 58 Algerian pre­fec­tures and killed at least 90 peo­ple.

“Farmers are still count­ing the dam­age to the olive trees,” Nagueb Ladjouzi, an Algerian olive oil exporter for the Huile d’o­live de Kabylie, told Olive Oil Times. ​“At the moment, we have esti­mates of at least 9,000 of the exist­ing 38,000 hectares in the Tizi Ouzou province and may con­firm the dam­age to 800 hectares in the Béjaïa area, both in the Kabylia region.”

According to Ladjouzi, it will take some time to fully assess the extent of the dam­age to local olive farm­ers and how the fires will impact the 2021 har­vest.

“Olive grow­ers are at the moment in a state of shock,” he said. ​“They have seen their olive trees burn as well as their farms with live­stock and some have even lost rel­a­tives in those vil­lages that suf­fered from the fires.”

According to World Grain, a trade pub­li­ca­tion, Algeria’s agri­cul­tural sec­tor has been hit by severe drought, which has already hurt cereal pro­duc­ers.

In its sum­mer update at the begin­ning of August, the Foreign Agriculture Service of the United States Department of Agriculture high­lighted​“dry pock­ets” in the veg­e­ta­tion in sev­eral Algerian regions and reported the fore­cast of a drop­ping yield due to a rain­fall deficit.

“Consequences will be severe on the next olive har­vest which was already weak­ened by the drought,” Ladjouzi said. ​“We must expect an olive oil price hike in Algeria because of the drop­ping yields.”

According to the local experts, among the rea­sons for the fire has been the lack of good farm­ing prac­tices.

“Before 1980, olive grow­ers knew how to con­tain the fires by keep­ing the groves clear of sub-fore­stal veg­e­ta­tion or even using pear trees bar­ri­ers as fire­walls,” Ladjouzi said. ​“These prac­tices and uses have been lost since.”

The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) esti­mates that Algeria’s forests cover about 0.9 per­cent of its ter­ri­tory, about 2.15 mil­lion hectares. Meanwhile, crops cover about 718,000 hectares and account for 15 per­cent of land use in the north­ern provinces.

According to LeMonde, the region has an annual fire sea­son, but the phe­nom­e­non is inten­si­fy­ing.

While the total amount of dam­age from the wild­fires is still unknown, local author­i­ties believe that it will be higher than the 44,000 hectares of veg­e­ta­tion burned in 2020.

While the dam­age has yet to be assessed as well as com­pen­sa­tions for farm­ers, doubts grow about the ori­gin of the fires.

AfricaNews reported that the Algeria secu­rity coun­cil, headed by President Abdelmadjid Tebboune, has accused arson­ists of start­ing some of the fires and linked their activ­i­ties to Moroccan inter­ests.

In a state­ment, the gov­ern­ment said that ​“the inces­sant hos­tile acts car­ried out by Morocco against Algeria have neces­si­tated the review of rela­tions between the two coun­tries.”

In its state­ment, Algerian author­i­ties said that the arson­ists have received sup­port both from Morocco and Israel, accord­ing to The Times of Israel.

However, local experts said the numer­ous fires in the Mediterranean basin should push the gov­ern­ment to imple­ment new pre­ven­tion mea­sures and invest in fire­fight­ing infra­struc­ture and tech­nol­ogy.

According to the United Nations, tem­per­a­tures in Algeria hit 47 ºC on the worst days of the fires, exac­er­bat­ing them.

“The extent of the mas­sive for­est blazes in the North African coun­try was clearly vis­i­ble from space and pub­lished by Nasa”, the UN said. ​“One image, cap­tured by the Aqua satel­lite, showed a vast plume of smoke over north­ern Algeria, where more than 62,000 hectares have burned so far this year.”

Nasa’s Earth Observatory had sin­gled out the Kabylia region as the most hit, with ​“the bright white por­tions of the smoke plume sug­gested the pres­ence of pyrocu­mu­lonim­bus fire clouds.”

• Le Monde
• AfricaNews
• Euronews