| Abstract |
The cereal needs of Algeria at present based on about 200 kg/head is 3.66 million M. tons. The population of 18.3 million has one of the highest growth rate (3.2) in the world. The average cereal crop is about 1.85 million M. tons from about 3 million hectares. This means Algeria needs to double its average production in order to arrive at a selfsufficancy level and must then on maintain a growth rate of at least 3.2 percent in order to be in par with the population. Algeria went through a second season of highly unfavorable crop production conditions during the 1977-78. There was a total failure of preseeding rains in most of the regions. Hence a good part of the cereals were seeded on dry seed bed. During November the rainfall was normal and this allowed all early seeded crops to germinate. The remaining of the cereals were planted during late December, Mid December to end of February was again very dry and the winter was warm. Thus due to lack of adequate weed elimination during the preseeding preparations and lack of moisture and warm conditions, the early seeded crop was very poor. Rains started towards the end of February and continued on periodically up to the month of June. The late rains helped to have sorne harvest on the early seeded crop as well as allowed to have a good crop on the late seeded crop. Tho details of area dis.tribution and production for the year 1977-78 are reported in Table A-I. The area given is the actual harvested area and is only about 75 % of the projected seeded area. The production reported is 14.35 million quintals but this do not take into account the quantities kept back by the private farmers for autoconsumption and seed and the autoconsumption in the other sectors. Taking these into account the production during the 1977-78 crop might have been close to national average. Stripe rust was the only notable disease. This was limited to the bread wheat variety Siete Cerros and that too only in the central and eastern regions. This was the 3rd year in succession Siete Cerros was highly infected by the stripe rust and this variety needs urgent replacement. |
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