Morocco is navigating an increasingly complex food inflation landscape in which a record domestic agricultural harvest provides only partial protection against a mounting set of external and structural pressures. A detailed analysis published on Sunday by Medias24 offers one of the most comprehensive assessments to date of how global geopolitical shocks — particularly the disruption of the Strait of Hormuz — are transmitting into Morocco’s food economy through logistics costs, fertilizer prices, and upstream production chains, rather than through direct commodity supply shortfalls.
The immediate impact on cereal imports is limited, as Morocco’s main sourcing basins — Europe, North America, and the Black Sea region — lie outside the Hormuz corridor. Wheat is trading around €194 per ton, below its historical average of €202. However, maritime freight costs have increased by 15 to 20 percent across all origins, driven by broader capacity pressures, route diversifications linked to multiple crises, and insurance surcharges. The port of Casablanca, which handles 55 to 70 percent of annual cereal imports, is experiencing persistent congestion, with 19 vessels at anchorage as of last Friday. The resulting demurrage costs — between $18,000 and $20,000 per day per vessel, and averaging one month of immobilization — are adding up to ten percent to the landed cost of some cargoes.
The more serious and structurally consequential risk lies in fertilizers. Urea has risen approximately 50 percent since the beginning of the conflict, reaching around $700 per ton FOB Egypt — the global reference price. This spike is driven by the natural gas disruption in the Gulf, where production has fallen by roughly 20 percent, and by export restrictions from Russia and China. OCP Group has also announced a 30 percent reduction in its own production capacity. Since natural gas accounts for 70 to 90 percent of the production cost of nitrogen fertilizers, the transmission into agricultural input costs is structural rather than transient, with a six-to-nine-month lag before full price effects materialize in the following season’s import costs.
The food price data confirm that inflation has returned. The High Commission for Planning’s March 2026 figures show meat prices rising 2.4 percent in a single month, vegetables up 9.7 percent, and fruit up 2.6 percent. Transport costs, which rose 10 percent in March as oil prices hit a peak of $126 per barrel, are acting as a horizontal transmission belt, pushing up costs across the entire agri-food chain from field to market, and bearing particularly heavily on perishables transported from the Souss-Massa export production basin.
The structural vulnerabilities are sharpest in protein production. Eighty percent of the production cost of a Moroccan broiler chicken depends on maize and soya cake purchased on global markets. The oilseed sector imports approximately 98 percent of its raw material needs. Red meat livestock reconstitution remains fragile, with a 2025 census confirming that Morocco had lost 38 percent of its bovine and ovine herd since 2016. The state’s price support mechanism for soft wheat — capping mill-gate prices at 2,700 dirhams per ton regardless of import costs — provides a floor for bread prices but leaves hard wheat, maize, and animal feed exposed to the full force of global commodity and logistics volatility.
