This chart illustrates the dynamics of Morocco’s coarse grains supply and demand. The grey area in the chart shows production, which in Morocco is mostly barley. The saw-tooth nature of the production area reflects the weather dependency of Morocco’s crop production. The total use and feed use lines show strong growth over time. But that growth can be derailed by a series of bad harvests, as was the case in 2007 and 2008.

The vertical bars represent Morocco’s coarse grains imports, which have grown fairly steadily from 1.5 million metric tons to more than 2 million tons over the past 10 years. The green bars show U.S. coarse grains sales – mainly corn – which climbed to a peak of 1.3 million tons in 2005/2006 and then have declined as U.S. market share has slipped due to purchases from Europe and South America.

The U.S. Grains Council was instrumental in nurturing the rise of coarse grain feed consumption over the past 20 years. While Morocco is a market in which the United States has recently faced growing competition from Europe, Russia, the Ukraine, and South America, the extended drought is creating intensified supply pressures and thus opportunities for U.S. exports. Now the Council has turned its attention to initiatives to recapture the U.S. share of the Morocco market.