Antalya, 25 September 2014

Christine Ton Nu

Food dependency in the region A production that cannot satisfy the demand

Scarcity of natural resources in the Mediterranean

High food price volatility on international markets and increasing role of international markets in the supply chains

Competition between the Mediterranean States?

REMINDER OF THE CONTEXT 1/3

Source: IEMED, data: FAO

Cereal Production in the Mediterranean (2009)

Evolution of wheat production and consumption in North Africa (MT, Abis, source USDA 2013)

Source: WORLD BANK INDICATORS

Arable land (hectares per person) in Middle East and North Africa

Source: IEMED, data: UNCTAD, WB and OECD

Imports of Food Items in 2008 in the Mediterranean (% of total imports)

Aftermaths of food dependency: the cost of food subsidies (in % of the GDP) between 2000 and 2011

Source: Matthieu Brun (CIHEAM), Data: FAO, FMI, Cereal Office.

The erosion of the EU and the rise of new entrants in Mediterranean agricultural and agro-food

markets, 2000-2010 evolution - Mediterra 2014

Origin Market share 2000

Market share 2010

Difference %

Western Europe 64.4% 56.0% - 8.4%

Eastern Europe 0.9% 2.6% + 1.6%

Americas 10.7% 12.2% + 1.5%

Asia/Oceania 6% 8.4% + 2.4%

Other countries 18.8% 20.8% + 2.1%

A constantly rising demand of cereals in Southern and Eastern Mediterranean countries due to

population and economic growth

changes in food habits

Insufficient production due to climate and geographic constraints

REMINDER OF THE CONTEXT 2/3

Evolution of the Cereal Situation in the MENA Region from 1960 to 2011 (in Mt) (Abis, Mediterra 2012)

Source: IEMED, Data: FAO

Nutrition in the Mediterranean (2004-2006)

MENA share in world wheat imports

Source : Abis, 2012 (CIHEAM)

Wheat as a key commodity in the region

Bread as a symbolic food

Wheat: most imported agricultural product

Strategic dimensions of this commodity

REMINDER OF THE CONTEXT 3/3

North Africa’s dependency to cereal imports (Abis, 2012)

Share of imports in cereal consumption (FAOSTAT, 2013) Evolution of cereal import bills (source UN Comtrade)

A request of the 13 CIHEAM Member States end of 2012

Launching of the MED-AMIN initiative early 2014 (kick-off meeting in Paris)

Approval by the 13 agricultural ministries of CIHEAM in Feb. 2014 in Algiers

MED-AMIN : the result of a collective political will

MED-AMIN : MEDiterranean Agricultural

Market Information Network

A network coordinated by CIHEAM (Mediterranean Agronomic Institute of Montpellier & General Secretariat)

Work in close collaboration with FAO, AMIS Secretariat and the services of the European Commission

Name based on the notion of trust in Arabic “amin”

Overall Goal : contribute to food security of the Mediterranean populations, by providing advice to policy-makers on agricultural markets issues

Main objective: Promote cooperation and share experiences among the national information systems

on agricultural markets

“Promoting the implementation of the initiative "Mediterranean Agricultural Market Information Network (MED-AMIN)", launched in January 2014 to meet the CIHEAM member countries’ expectations of establishing an area of dialogue, exchange, and technical cooperation around the monitoring of agricultural cereal markets and the methodology of statistical systems for these commodities” CIHEAM Ministerial Declaration, February 2014

MED-AMIN’s main objective

1. Create trust among the network's members as well as mutual knowledge and understanding by means of meetings, exchanges of experience and good practices, and common work on monitoring the cereal markets in the Mediterranean;

2. Improve the knowledge on cereal markets (production, utilization, stocks, prices, trade exchanges) in the region, in a forward-looking way (« market intelligence ») ;

3. Share information and create a common understanding of market monitoring in the countries;

4. Reinforce the countries' capacities to produce, collect and analyze data of better quality by means of trainings, experts' missions, methodological exchanges, common projects, etc.;

5. Produce analysis, in particular on short term perspectives for the commodities selected, as well as advocacy about cereals and food security, and better communication to the decision-makers and the media.

Specific short-term objectives

In a first stage (possible extensions in the future)

• Cereals: wheat (soft and durum wheat), corn, barley and rice

• 13 countries of CIHEAM

• Public sector : focal points / country

Med-AMIN’s scope

Activities undertaken are:

1. Perform an inventory of data collected at the national level through a single template built by the Secretariat with the assistance of experts and sent to the focal points

2. Work on methodologies to build cereal balances

3. Identify additional sources of funding to sustain the network

MED-AMIN activities

Conclusions

A promising start but lots of challenges ahead

… we have to turn this initiative into a success

Next meeting: 6-7 November, Izmir

Coming soon: Med-AMIN website…

More information: tonnu@iamm.fr

abis@ciheam.org

Thank you for your attention!