Agriculture
From The Report: Tunisia 2018
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Agriculture plays an important role in the Tunisian economy which consists mostly of olive oil, cereals, dates, fruits and vegetables. Together with fishery, it accounted for 9.1% of GDP in 2016, generating €3.1bn. The sector has had to deal with several challenges, including land fragmentation, which contributes to poor access to credit; a considerable technology gap; climatic fluctuation and weak irrigation infrastructure, which has led to low productivity. In the face of increasingly constrained public funding, the government has chosen to lay the groundwork for attracting further private investment to help modernise the sector, with raising access to irrigated water one of the top priorities in the Tunisia 2020 strategy. This will be to the sustainable growth of Tunisia’s agriculture. This chapter contains an interview with Chokri Bayoudh, CEO, Office Nationale de l’Huile d’Olive.

Articles from this Chapter

Overview

Protect and grow: New measures are expected to incentivise investment and help the sector weather external challenges
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Agriculture in Tunisia mostly consists of olive oil, cereals, dates, fruits and vegetables. In recent years efforts to modernise the sector have steered it towards the development of an agri-business industry and away from traditional, small family farms. However, the sector still has to deal with several challenges, including land fragmentation, which contributes to poor access to credit; a considerable technology gap; along with climatic fluctuation and weak irrigation infrastructure, leading…

Interview

A key export: Chokri Bayoudh, CEO, Office Nationale de l’Huile d’Olive, on reinforcing Tunisia’s position as a major olive oil producer
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Interview:Chokri Bayoudh, CEO, Office Nationale de l’Huile d’Olive How can Tunisia secure its global position as the second-largest exporter of olive oil? CHOKRI BAYOUDH: To date, Tunisia has been the second-largest olive oil producer in the world after the EU, and represents 8% of the global production of olive oil. Tunisian olive oil also represents between 20-25% of global olive oil exploitation. Furthermore, we expect the 2017-18 olive oil season to surpass 185,000 tonnes, which already…

Analysis

Organic matter: After experiencing rapid growth in recent years, organic farming is attracting government and foreign interest
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Organic agriculture is relatively new in Tunisia, initiated in the 1980s through the private sector and only slowly developing up until the late 1990s. However, given the potential of this segment for Tunisia’s economy as a whole, it has benefitted from increasing attention from industry authorities since the early 2000s, which has led to much faster growth; organic-cultivated land expanded from 300 ha in 1997 to 500,000 ha in 2017. That year, the sector comprised over 3300 players and exported…