Roquiya [1] would not stop talking about her goats. “If you don’t have goats, you have nothing,” she declared, “they have al-khair (goodness) and baraka (blessing). I swear, they are better than watermelons.”

We were strolling through Feija, a pastoral plain in the province of Zagora in southeastern Morocco on the edge of the Sahara Desert. Roquiya’s community, the Misufa, were camel and goat herders in the region who began farming in the mid-1970s, driven by drought and a desire to settle down. They started by growing alfalfa, wheat, and vegetables to sustain their households and herds and grew small amounts of henna to sell. After 2008, the number of farms in Feija rapidly expanded, fueled by government irrigation assistance and the profitability of a new cash crop—hybrid watermelon.

[Figure 1]: A family’s goats and sheep graze on local vegetation that is reclaiming a farm field in Feija. Photo by Jamie Fico.

While much of Feija is still used today for grazing, the increasing demand on groundwater for agriculture since 2008 has caused the water table to drop. “Our ancestors lived predominantly on herding," Roquiya asserted, “They lived well, simply. They had health.” She explains how her goats can be sold for a decent price when their crops fail and provide milk for the family. As she spoke, she bent down to stroke one of them lovingly on the head. Her grandchildren ran past, chasing the bleating stragglers to the border of their farm that fades into the plain’s wild vegetation.

Roquiya, a fifty-four-year-old woman, can name every grass, flower, and herb that blooms from Feija’s soil. She has spent her entire life here, wandering the plains just outside her family’s farm every morning and evening with her herds. Every plant has a local name and purpose. The dried sap from the acacia tree can be collected and sold for ten USD per kilo. Lakamuna, a small yellow flower, is used in tea and is mixed with henna to put on babies’ heads to protect them from the sun during long days herding in the khala (wild, empty rangelands). Yet these are mostly memories of the past. Today, those who have not settled in Feija have moved to the nearby city of Zagora or away from the region.

Roquiya’s tribe, the Misufa of the Ait Atta confederation, were part of a wave of pastoral groups moving into the oases of the Middle Draa Valley between the mid-eighteenth to nineteenth centuries who offered protection to local date farming communities in exchange for access to land and resources. The community only began farming in the plains in the mid-1970s when drought and advances in well technology pushed them to sell herds and settle in Feija. Collective memories of the Ait Atta’s historic resistance to the French Protectorate until 1933 is still a feature of local pride. It is reflected today in the insistence of many Misufa to not let go of their Tamazight language and collective institutions. It is also reflected in their distrust of state governance over Feija’s groundwater and encroaching government projects on their collective lands (including an airport and an expanding military barracks).

Collective lands, however, have a complicated past in Morocco. There are approximately fifteen million hectares of collective lands in Morocco belonging to 5,043 communities. Designated as the inalienable right of ethnic collectives (tribes) by the French in 1919, 337,000 hectares of these lands located within irrigated areas are required to be divided amongst members of the collectives and used for agriculture under the 1969 Agriculture Investment Code. Eventually, Morocco plans to privatize two million hectares of the arable collective lands. However, the majority of collective lands in Morocco are rangelands and not suitable for agriculture.

[Figure 2]: Camels graze on the collective lands of Feija, May 2023.

Prior to the 1980s, agriculture in the Middle Draa Valley was mostly confined to the borders of the six date palm oases irrigated by the Draa River.  Over time, landholdings fragmented into smaller sizes in the oases due to inheritance, pushing families to extend agriculture into the surrounding rangeland. Feija’s flat terrain and once plentiful groundwater reserves made it an ideal canvas for the agricultural expansionist imaginary that captured the post-independence state. Resting adjacent to the borders of the Draa Valley irrigation scheme completed in 1972, surface water from the Draa River does not reach the plain. However, the spread of tubewells across Morocco in the 1980-90s allowed farmers to expand the country’s irrigation frontiers into marginal and pastoral lands by accessing groundwater.

Misufa members describe the beginnings of agriculture in Feija as a strategy to keep the community together.  Families were leaving pastoralism for urban wage labor as drought made herding less secure. The tribe delimited the land amongst members who were willing to farm it while retaining their collective governance over the space. They also brought potable water, electricity, and a primary school to the plain. The majority of farmers today in Feija do not hold land titles, but rather ‘certificates of farming exploitation’ that are approved by the tribal and local state authorities.  However, making a living on farms in the rangeland has been difficult and quickly rose in expense as farmers began incorporating modern agriculture technology such as tubewells, solar-powered pumps, and hybrid seed to increase production. 

It was local Misufa business owners who first brought hybrid watermelon seeds to Feija in 2002 through partnerships with private Moroccan seed distributors and later under trials for international seed companies such as Monsanto. Today, the price of hybrid watermelon seeds by Bayer/Seminis has increased to cost farmers in Zagora around three hundred USD per hectare. The average Misufa family cannot afford this price, but local agriculture suppliers easily offer these seeds and agro-chemicals on credit, and many farmers also benefit from free well pumps and irrigation equipment to start farms, a program intended to support small-scale farmers under the country’s previous agriculture strategy, the Green Morocco Plan.

[Figure 3]: Modern technology including pump wells and government-subsidized irrigation equipment have allowed farmers to expand production in Feija. Photo by Jamie Fico.

Whereas just a couple farmers began growing hybrid watermelon on the plain in 2002, access to irrigation equipment fueled a rapid expansion in production after 2008. The growth of Moroccan fruit exports to the European Union between 2016 and 2021 also contributed to a rise in watermelon growing in the pre-Saharan region. Due to Zagora’s warm climate, farmers could grow watermelon two months before the rest of the country, thereby claiming a niche in the market. Moroccan investors from outside the tribe, both from other regions of the country and Zagora, began pouring money into watermelon production by partnering with tribe members. This dramatically changed life for families in Feija by increasing the value of land and churning out endless rows of commodity production on the rangeland.

[Figure 4]: Development of farms in Lamghader, Feija from 2005 to 2020. Source: Google Earth.

While expensive, watermelon is relatively easy to farm and offers a quick profit with only a three-month growing period. Farmers tend to spend four thousand USD on seeds, irrigation equipment, and fertilizer per hectare but can make up to twenty thousand USD per hectare at the beginning of the season. However, the value of watermelon tends to fall by the summer (June-August) when production outpaces demand.  At this time, Zagora watermelon farmers are unable to compete with larger producers in southwestern Morocco who are located closer to export companies. Watermelons are left rotting in fields when the value drops under the cost of production and many farmers default on their credit.  “So many have gone crazy over watermelon,” Roquiya says, “before, we didn’t have this problem.”

Regardless of these risks, many claim that watermelon production supports the local economy. “People were poor before watermelons,” one male agricultural laborer informed me, “should we leave them living like that?”

These advocates point to women like Halima, a forty-four-year-old agricultural laborer, as an example of how watermelons have benefited the community. Halima is a single mother who works eleven-hour days planting watermelon sprouts in the winter and collecting the vines and plastic at the end of the season for between seven and eight USD per day, about two to three USD less than male laborers. “It is not the work that is hard,” she says, “but the people.” At times she has to deal with farm owners who belittle her and the other female workers, telling them, “You barely worked at all today.” Or, “You’re just working for yourself, you don’t have children to feed.” However, Halima, the sole provider for her six children, prefers this work compared to her previous life as a pastoralist. When she was herding, the work never ended, and she had no roof over her head.

Halima does not have rights to land in Feija as she is not from the Misufa tribe. Even so, women across Morocco have largely been excluded from access to land and benefits of land sales by their ethnic collectives.  Rural female activists have fought hard in the Soulaliyate movement to address this inequality in land rights, and won new legislation in 2019 that includes female rights to collective lands.

[Figure 5]: Local workers harvest watermelon in Feija in May 2023. Photo by Jamie Fico.

Locally, agricultural modernization in Zagora has done little to increase women’s influence in the community. Instead, their labor tending subsistence crops, herds, and families takes a backseat to men’s watermelon and date production. Zenib, a woman in her early twenties in Feija, shares, “We have alfalfa and wheat on our farm, but the watermelon replaces everything else. Once the watermelon begins to grow, that’s it, nothing else is watered. Everything else, the alfalfa, is dry.”

Roquiya adds to this, saying, “The men buy everything on credit. They tell the agriculture shop, ‘after I sell my watermelon, I will pay you.’ But there are some who sell their watermelon and buy a car instead. They go to jail because they didn’t pay back their credit. Their wife, poor thing, watches over her children, until he returns from jail.” Looking me in the eye, she says, “You need to have trust. You need to be honest. If there is no trust, there is nothing.”

Trust is difficult to find today in Feija as members of the collective seek access to land endowed with better access to groundwater. Some Misufa have recently expanded farms onto the collective lands of other tribes, leading to conflict. Watermelon buyers working for agro-export companies in Agadir make loose deals with farmers, only to break them when the market falls, sometimes abandoning them completely with a ripe crop and a bear market. Investors from outside the tribe are also known to rent land from families in Feija and drill tubewells, only to abandon the land if they cannot find water.

Local authorities and residents are locked in a constant battle over groundwater in Feija. The city of Zagora accesses much of its drinking water from the basin’s aquifer. In 2017, when taps ran dry in Zagora, residents and environmental activists blamed Feija’s watermelons. Due to increasing public pressure, authorities restricted watermelon growing to one hectare per land user in 2023 and 2024 and are planning on implementing more water policing measures.

Yet others insist that watermelon production is keeping the community afloat. “We want our young people to work!” says an older resident of Feija, one who is actively pushing for the tribe and local authorities to continue providing land to young Misufa men who can farm it. He is distraught by the high levels of unemployment that plague young people in Zagora and sees agriculture as the answer to the region’s economic stagnation. Unfortunately, the unsustainable usage of groundwater in Feija leaves little hope for the future survival of farms at their current scale. However, his concerns raise a good point: how do Moroccan youth today living on the margins of the country fit into its vision of development?  Morocco’s development strategy rests heavily on the concept of entrepreneurship. More specifically, of youth using technology and market-driven approaches to forge their own businesses and projects in an economy that is increasingly unable to absorb qualified young people into the public sector.  Collective lands are mobilized by the government as a lever of local socio-economic development by encouraging farming and investment projects over more sustainable land uses.

Youth in far-flung regions of the country such as Zagora find it difficult to break out of the subsistence and wage labor economy. Instead, many end up working in the informal sector by providing labor on local watermelon or date palm farms, or migrating for work elsewhere. Land is one of their few assets. It is no surprise, then, that Misufa farmers see themselves as increasing the productivity of marginal land by incorporating advanced irrigation techniques (solar-powered well pumps, drip irrigation, and fertigation) for watermelon, a high-value commodity that has grown the nation’s fruit exports by  seventeen percent between 2016 to 2021.  

Nevertheless, the problem of water is unavoidable, as is Feija’s challenging living circumstances. Idir and Fatima moved their family from Feija in 2009. “We ran out of water in our well” said Idir, “but also, we wanted our children to go to school.” The pair were unhappy that many boys and girls in Feija do not finish their education. Feija has a primary school, but the middle and high school are located twenty kilometers away in Zagora, meaning that students need to take transportation or stay at the local dormitories in order to finish their education. Many do not.

The family now lives in the city of Ouarzazate where they have easy access to water on a small farm located near a dam and adjacent to the local high school. Idir and Fatima are still deeply connected to the Misufa community, visiting Feija for weddings and welcoming family members throughout the year.

Reflecting on their past, Idir says he would never return to long days herding camels around southeastern Morocco. It deprived him of the opportunity to go to school. However, he also believes that watermelon production has gotten out of hand in Feija. “Before, we used to plant just normal watermelon, from seeds we exchanged amongst ourselves. We used manure as natural fertilizer. We just grew a little, not like the quantities today. These old varieties, will you believe it, had an incredible aroma,” Idir smiles, remembering the smell and rich flavor of local varieties, “they weren’t like the watermelons today that are full of water and chemical additives.” Idir is not against watermelon production, but sees them as one of many crops farmers can make a living on in the region, diversified with vegetables, olives, and dates for local markets. For him, there is nothing better than farming, “but you need water.”

[Figure 6]: Local watermelon seeds saved by a woman in Feija. Photo by Jamie Fico.

It is not just water that is at stake in southeastern Morocco’s watermelon crisis, it is the future of a community that is trying to construct their identity in a quickly changing environmental and social context. As water resources decline, the Misufa are left grappling with how to maintain their rights over land and their collective cohesion while some families are racked by debt and others make it rich. In watermelon production, Zagora farmers largely find themselves at the bottom of a hierarchy led by private agro-exporters with women providing the cheapest labor for seeding and weeding.  The agricultural wage gap between men and women is a national issue that requires policy enforcement and public recognition of women in agriculture. 

Morocco’s rural development approach based on agricultural intensification is failing small-scale farmers, women, and youth in Zagora. Instead of encouraging local land uses, government programs have promoted an intensification of agriculture through the distribution of land and irrigation assistance for farms, while further marginalizing the role of women in semi-pastoral communities. As a result, watermelon farmers in Zagora have taken much blame for the region’s water crisis. Yet a closer examination of daily life in Feija reveals how local women and semi-herders continue to draw upon generational knowledge of the environment and ecology— by collecting local herbs for make home remedies to quell a fever or stop a cut from bleeding, grazing herds of camel and goat on the plain, or saving melon landraces that do not require high inputs of water or fertilizer. With water resources in southeastern Morocco in short supply, the future of life in the pre-Sahara requires a re-appraisal of these local, often overlooked, practices of making a living that persist in the margins of agricultural modernization.  

Acknowledgments: Jamie Fico extends her deep gratitude to friends and colleagues in Zagora for their support with this research from 2021 to 2023. She would also like to thank Dr. Karen Rignall and the editors at Jadaliyya for their helpful comments on this article, and gratefully acknowledges financial support for this research from the Syracuse Department of Geography, the Roscoe-Martin Fund at Syracuse University, the American Institute for Maghrib Studies, and the Fulbright U.S. Student Program, which is sponsored by the U.S. Department of State and Moroccan-American Commission for Educational and Cultural Exchange (MACECE). Its contents are solely the responsibility of the author and do not necessarily represent the official views of the Fulbright Program, the Government of the United States, or MACECE.