Maghreb: For the Eid festivities, the price of sheep soared

This year in the Maghreb, the festivities of Eid al-Adha, the Eid al-Kebir, left a bitter taste for families that were set on sacrificing a sheep. In Morocco, the festivities were simply called off. In Algeria, a million sheep were imported, and in Tunisia, where prices reached an all-time high, consumers were left simply hoping for the best. A turning-point had been reached: those countries could simply not meet domestic demand, because of the region’s recurring droughts. And yet their populations did not seem ready to admit this and, for the most part, were in a state of denial. Some people even dreamt of imitating the recent Saudi example of creating mega-sheepfolds.

And so the people of the Maghreb were the powerless witnesses of a spiralling price rise. The situation was all the more difficult to accept because lamb has always been plentiful. In Algeria, internetters went so far as to post pictures from the fifties which show herds of sheep being shipped from Algiers port bound for France. For many years, the highway leading to the port was called “la moutonnière”, the sheep road.

Today, the symptoms of global warming are omnipresent. In Morocco, after six straight years of drought in the farming regions, the Skoura oasis (in the south) is now partly abandoned by its inhabitants. In southern Algeria too, in order to cope with the advancing desert, trains to the town of Béchar carry workers with shovels to clear the sand from the tracks.

In addition to the droughts, studies¹ have warned of “the pressure exerted on the pastureland and (of the fact) that it is increasingly difficult to maintain a rational management of the land to allow for a renewal of the grazing pastures.” In Morocco, a study² points out that “the dynamics observed since the sixties testify to the gradual disappearance of grazing land in good condition.”

The Eid al-Kebir (or Eid al-Adha, the feast of the sacrifice) remains nonetheless widely observed in Morocco. In the 1950s, when the model of the extended family was largely dominant, it was the eldest member who sacrificed a sheep. Today, demographic development has increased the demand but so has the rise of the nuclear family.

On the morning of the Eid, the courtyards of the big city tower-blocks are turned into slaughterhouses and from 11am the smell of grilled meat fills the air. While the lamb is left to hang and drain for 24 hours, the offal is eaten immediately as kebabs of liver, heart or kidneys. There are many ways of preparing the tripe and heads of sheep.

The consequences of the drought

For three years now, we have been witnessing everywhere an unstoppable price spiral. In Tunisia , the president of the Farmer’s Union, Midani el-Daoui, recently deplored the fact that the price of a sheep is over 1,000 dinars ($341), “even for animals weighing less than 20 kilos”. In April 2025, el-Daoui was worried³ about the decrease in the number of breeding ewes: “The females continue being slaughtered, which has a lasting impact on the reproductive capacity of our livestock.” Consequently, there are fewer sheep on the market, which fuels inflation.

Besides which, in this country as in its neighbours, on account of the droughts, the price of fodder has risen and sheep are fed on barley and maize, less nutritional than green fodder, and on imported soya. In Algeria, the press called the runaway prices “diabolical”. Already in 2023, Lamine Derradji, managing director of the state-owned company Alviar (Algérienne des viandes rouges), expressed concern:

“It costs no more than 100 dinars a day to feed a sheep. After ten months of fattening, the cost should only be 40-60,000 dinars ($300-$450). Now, a sheep is sold for between 100,000 and 120,000 dinars ($760-$900).”

Since then, Lamine Deradji was dismissed following a report from the Court of Auditors criticizing Alviar for not having used its full production capacity for lack of a livestock development plan, and blaming him especially for the failure of the costly pilot farms (meant to give a boost to livestock breeding and the production of fodder) which were his responsibility.

A crisis of the breeding system

Given what can only be termed a crisis of the sheep-rearing system, each country has reacted with its own specific measures. In Morocco, King Mohammed VI asked the population not to sacrifice sheep during the Eid festivities this year, an extremely rare measure. “Our country is facing climate and economic challenges which have given rise to a substantial reduction in our supply of sheep,” he stressed in a speech read by Ahmed Toufiq, Minister of Endowments and Islamic Affairs. The royal announcement had a drastic effect on prices. According to the online outlet Le Site Info, they fell from 5,000 dirhams ($545) to 3,000 ($330)). The Breeders Association estimated the order of losses at 12 billion dirhams ($1.3bn) for the sector as a whole. To cope with the drop in its sheep population, Morocco has resorted, for several years now, to importing sheep from Spain, an activity which has gradually increased.

In 2023, nearly 400,000 heads of sheep were imported, and nearly 500,000 in 2024, according to the Moroccan Ministry of Agriculture. These operations have benefitted from subsidies in the form of exemptions from customs duties and VAT or consumer incentives. In April 2024, the website H24pinfo detailed as follows: “The exceptional subsidy for Eid al-Adha 2024 involved 474,312 sheep, and cost a total of 13.3 billion dirhams ($1.35bn).” According to the same source, the political opposition “continues to denounce” these steps because of “inefficient management and continued high prices”.

Situation “Unacceptable”

In Algeria, the idea of importing sheep for the Eid festivities became widespread in 2024 during the month of Ramadan after it was learned that Alviar, the State-owned company, had imported 30,000 live sheep from Romania. These were sent to the slaughterhouses managed by the company and the meat was sold at a regulated price. After which, rumours circulated that sheep would be imported for the Eid. These were quickly squashed by Alviar. Later, in November 2024, Algerian President Abdelmadjid Tebboune made an official declaration in which he opined that “rather than import sheep for the Eid, we should find a remedy for the soaring prices of red meat”.

In Algeria, prices rose substantially. In 2023, the weekly magazine Jeune Afrique reported that sheep were being sold “for at least 50,000 dinars ($380) and up to 120,000 dinars ($900) at most retail outlets in the capital and its suburbs. In other words, for six times as much as the guaranteed minimum wage.” The inability of low-income families - but also the middle classes - to afford a sheep caused widespread frustration. Some found themselves obliged to go into debt.

The consumers’ associations were up in arms. In 2024, Mustapha Zebdi, the president of the Association for the Protection of Algerian Consumers (Apoce), told Dz News TV: “Many Algerian families won’t make the sacrifice because of the high price of a sheep. That’s the reality.” “Last year (2023), there were no sheep for Eid al-Adha at less than 60,000 dinars ($450)” he reported, arguing for the importation of sheep “to enable Algerian families to observe that festivity.” Last March, in a press conference, the Algerian President expressed outrage that a sheep could sell for 170,000 dinars (over $1,300). He called this situation “unacceptable in a sheep-breeding country like Algeria,” according to the website actualgerie.com. This is presumably why the president finally reversed his decision not to import sheep. On 22 May 2025, 371,000 sheep were landed from 27 ships in 8 Algerian ports. Two-thirds came from Romania and the rest from Spain.

Algeria took advantage of a windfall effect following the Moroccan decision not to sacrifice any animals and therefore to renounce importing them as usual from Spain. To distribute the sheep around the country, lorries, trains and even a Russian jumbo jet were enlisted.

In neighbouring Tunisia, the specialized company Ellouhoum had announced last year that the country would be importing sheep for the Eid. But this year the Tunisian Agricultural Union reassured people that there were enough sheep available for the Eid sacrifices and that, because of recent rainfall, Tunisia would not need to resort to imports.

Environmental denial

But over and above these economic considerations, the breeding model itself is at issue. In addition to the droughts, sheep farmers in the steppes of the southern Maghreb practice a form of browsing-based rearing, whereas in similar conditions, Australian farmers have planted massive quantities of shrubs for fodder. Natural areas planted with these bushes provide the flocks with better nutrition, especially in arid zones. In Algeria, academic surveys have revealed that few breeders will admit that the deterioration of steppe rangeland is due to overgrazing and that drought is merely an aggravating factor.

So governments in the Maghreb countries find themselves caught between, on the one hand, the desire of consumers to prioritise a shift towards a diet with higher consumption of animal products, as occurred in Europe after WW2, and the realities of climate change on the other. These last few years, confronted with increasingly arid conditions, breeders have liquidised their assets by selling off part of their livestock. Faced with structural problems like overgrazing and a scarcity of forage due to global warming, authorities have failed to take short-term measures such as banning he slaughter of female sheep. In Tunisia, professionals have proposed to import ewes to fill out their herds, while in Morocco, a recent agreement with the French sheep industry envisages a resort to artificial insemination.

As for the Algerian President, in November last, he called for talks with the profession to settle the problem of inadequate sheep production “once and for all.” In the Maghreb countries the decisions to cancel the Eid sacrifice or to import sheep attest to the very real vulnerability of the natural environment to global warming. The race is on to adapt production methods. Will that be enough ?