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3/3/12

North Africa: Morocco braces for lower crops

Morocco will have to import more cereals and raw sugar as drought and an unusually long cold spell have curbed crop cultivation, the head of the agriculture industry said on Friday. 

The shortage comes at a sensitive time for the North African country's $100-billion economy, which relies for 14 percent of its output on agriculture. Ahmed Ouayach, who heads the Moroccan Confederation of Agriculture, said rain shortage this year meant Morocco would import more cereals and raw sugar than in the previous year. 

Agriculture employs 40 percent of the 11-million workforce in Morocco, one of the world's biggest cereal importers, which relies heavily on rain due mostly to the predominance of subsistence and rudimentary farming. 

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