The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) has published a major report on the state of soil resources worldwide. Titled Status of the World’s Soil Resources 2026, the 850-page document, whose preparation began in 2021, provides a “scientifically rigorous” assessment of soil management practices currently used around the world, their impact on threats facing soils and trends in the adoption of sustainable soil management (SSM) globally.
The report, the second edition following the inaugural publication in 2015, devotes an entire chapter to the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region. The region is described as one of the most exposed in the world to land and water constraints, with increasing aridity expected as a result of climate change. According to the report, more than 43% of its surface area is desert, another 40% consists of dry to semi-dry areas, and only 17% of the region receives annual rainfall of at least 300 mm, the threshold covering most agricultural activity and food production.
Across the region, around one-third of land is classified as agricultural land, including cropland and pasture, but the share that is actually arable does not exceed 5%, according to Status of the World’s Soil Resources 2026, to which the Intergovernmental Technical Panel on Soils (ITPS), the scientific and technical advisory body of the Global Soil Partnership (GSP), whose secretariat is hosted by the FAO, also contributed.
The remaining land is divided between urban areas and desert. This structural scarcity of cultivable land places Morocco on a trajectory that is both comparable to and, in several respects, distinct from that of its North African neighbors.
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In terms of changes in cultivated land, Morocco is among the few countries in the region to have recorded notable expansion between 2015 and 2022, the report notes. Sudan recorded the largest increase, gaining 0.91 million hectares, followed by Egypt with an additional 0.27 million hectares and Morocco with 0.24 million hectares. Syria, meanwhile, lost 0.29 million hectares of cultivated land over the same period, a decline of 5%, while Palestine saw its cultivated area fall by 26.2%.
Regarding irrigation, the report indicates that equipped areas expanded the most in Egypt, up 0.23 million hectares, and Saudi Arabia, up 0.18 million hectares, with Morocco completing the top three after adding 0.16 million hectares between 2015 and 2022. Egypt nevertheless remains the country where irrigation covers the largest share of agricultural land, with 98.3% of its agricultural area equipped for irrigation, compared with a much lower regional average, the FAO notes.
The UN agency also points out that conservation agriculture, a farming system that helps prevent the loss of arable land while restoring degraded land, remains marginal throughout the region. In 2018-2019, it covered just 387,200 hectares across the MENA region, or around 0.4% of cultivated land. Iran accounts for most of this area with 300,000 hectares, well ahead of Syria with 30,000 hectares, Tunisia with 14,000 hectares and Morocco, which has only 13,000 hectares under conservation agriculture, ahead of Iraq with 12,000 hectares and Sudan with 10,000 hectares.
Erosion, a major risk
In their assessment, the authors of Status of the World’s Soil Resources 2026 identified several threats facing soils across the MENA region. Chief among them is soil erosion, which, in its water and wind forms, is the main cause of agricultural land degradation throughout the region.
They report soil losses frequently exceeding 100 tonnes per hectare per year in mountainous areas in the western part of the region, a pattern shared by Algeria, Iran, Lebanon, Morocco, Syria and Tunisia. In Egypt, certain areas record even higher losses, ranging from 200 to 550 tonnes per hectare annually.
In Morocco specifically, annual sediment yield, an indicator used to measure the scale of soil erosion, is estimated at between 100 and 4,620 tonnes per hectare depending on the watershed, based on a sample of 38 basins studied. Water erosion is described as intense in the High Atlas, while the Anti-Atlas faces only low to moderate risk. By comparison, 6.4% of Tunisia’s territory is exposed to very high annual soil loss exceeding 30 tonnes per hectare, with another 4.2% facing high losses of between 20 and 30 tonnes per hectare. In Egypt, localized measurements in the country’s northwest have recorded losses of up to 563 tonnes per hectare.
Morocco is also highly exposed to wind erosion, according to the report, which lists it among the region’s most affected countries alongside Egypt, Iran, Libya, Saudi Arabia and Tunisia.
Between 2015 and 2022, around 70% to 74% of the region’s territory was classified as facing high to very high wind erosion risk, with the highest values on the climatic erosivity index recorded in Algeria, Mauritania, Morocco and Sudan.
The report identifies another threat to soils in the region: large-scale fires linked to drought and high temperatures, which further degrade vegetation cover that would otherwise help limit erosion.
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Regarding soil organic carbon (SOC), which improves soil structure, promotes water circulation and supports microorganisms, the report states that the MENA region as a whole holds just 4.1% of global stocks despite accounting for 18% of the world’s land area. Average surface organic carbon stocks, between 0 and 30 cm, are estimated at 37 tonnes per hectare, rising to 78 tonnes per hectare over a one-meter soil profile. This structural weakness is linked to the predominance of dryland soils with low organic matter content.
In Morocco, a study conducted in Sidi Bennour, in the Doukkala plain, measured an average soil organic matter content of 1.4%, with higher concentrations in vertisols and lower levels in immature soils. Another study in the same irrigated Doukkala region, one of the country’s most important agricultural areas, found that the introduction of new agricultural technologies had a negative effect on soil quality, particularly through the loss of organic matter.
Another study cited in the report, however, found that adopting direct seeding, or no-till farming, in Morocco increased soil organic carbon compared with conventional tillage, a finding consistent with the FAO’s regional recommendations on sustainable soil management practices.
Regarding soil biodiversity, the FAO report classifies coastal areas stretching from Casablanca to Tunisia among the parts of North Africa where the potential threat is considered “very high,” alongside the urban areas of Tripoli and Benghazi in Libya and Egypt’s Nile Delta. The main driver of this threat, it explains, is the risk of desertification, while the region’s desert areas, which face less direct human pressure, are paradoxically considered at low risk of soil biodiversity loss.
Agriculture largely dependent on rainfall
The report estimates Morocco’s arable land at 8.4 million hectares, with more than 80% under rainfed agriculture. It also notes that 70% of Moroccan farms are small holdings of less than five hectares, often fragmented into scattered plots.
Between 1990 and 2022, yields of four cereal crops tracked by the report, maize, barley, sorghum and wheat, showed significant variability in Morocco. Wheat recorded the highest yields, followed by barley, maize and sorghum. Agricultural inputs remain dominated by nitrogen fertilizers, followed by phosphate and potassium.
A study examining the effects of fertilizer applications on maize yields in Morocco found that phosphate accounted for the largest share of yield variation, with a coefficient of determination close to 7%, compared with a marginal effect of just 0.14% for nitrogen. A similar trend was observed for barley, wheat and sorghum, where phosphate fertilizers consistently outperformed nitrogen and potassium in contributing to higher yields.
Regarding nutrient balances, Morocco is among the countries, alongside Algeria, Iran, Iraq and Sudan, that previously experienced depletion of soil phosphorus reserves but whose current nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium balances are now close to zero or positive. The Kingdom is also listed alongside Jordan, Lebanon, Libya, Sudan and Tunisia among countries where these balances are broadly stable, although overall input levels remain low.
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On soil salinization, Morocco stands out for an atypical trend, according to the report. While most countries in the MENA region saw their areas of saline soils expand between 1980 and 2018, with notable annual increases in Yemen, up 1.2%, Iran, up 0.49%, Egypt and Palestine, each up 0.55%, and Saudi Arabia and Syria, each up 0.39%, Morocco is among the few exceptions showing a downward trend, with an annual decrease of 0.39%, comparable to Tunisia’s decline of 0.26% and Sudan’s decline of 0.98%.
As a proportion of its territory, however, Morocco, along with Tunisia and Libya, falls within the group of North African countries where saline soils account for between 10% and 20% of land. It remains behind Algeria, which has the highest proportion in the subregion at 26.3%, while Egypt and Sudan remain below 10%.
As for irrigated land, considered the most exposed to salinization, the report places Morocco and Algeria in the range of 20% to 30% of irrigated areas affected by salt, compared with 30% to 40% in Syria and Egypt and up to 50% in Tunisia. A Morocco-specific study cited in the report estimates that around 30% of the country’s irrigated area is affected by salinization, with yield losses reaching up to 50% in the most affected areas, while more than 37,000 hectares of irrigated land have already been affected.
Economically, the FAO notes that annual losses linked to salinization across the MENA region are estimated by the United Nations Environment Programme at around $1 billion, or between $1,600 and $2,750 per hectare of affected land. This gives an indication of the economic significance of the decline in salinization observed in Morocco.
FAO’s recommended solutions
At the end of its assessment, the report’s authors put forward a series of recommendations for sustainable soil management across the MENA region, including Morocco. To combat water and wind erosion, they call for stronger vegetation cover through the planting of species adapted to local conditions, including trees, shrubs, grasses and deep-rooted perennial plants.
To improve soil organic matter and biodiversity, they recommend greater use of organic carbon inputs, animal manure, on-farm composting and organic by-products from agricultural industries. This would first require training farmers in techniques for composting organic residues, they note.
The report also calls for the wider adoption of balanced nutrient management based on soil monitoring data and the development of comprehensive soil fertility maps for each country in the region, while ensuring access to affordable fertilizers, particularly in areas affected by instability.
On salinization, the FAO recommends establishing integrated management systems to limit its spread. Morocco’s already favorable trajectory in this area, as documented in the report, illustrates the kind of results such an approach can achieve.
