Access to Land on the Agricultural Frontier in Arid Algeria: Policy and Land Markets
Issues
Paper presented at the First Arab Land Conference
Dubai, February 26-28, 2018
Topic: Access to land for sustainable business and investment
Ali Daoudi & Jean-Philippe Colin
Abstract
This paper provides an analysis of Algerian public land development programs launched since
1983 in arid regions (steppe and Sahara), along with legal and economic incentives for national
private operators. Even if the overall picture of the implementation of the land development
policy is mixed, we focus on some success stories in order to decipher the conditions for
successful land development in such regions. Detailed local field empirical research shows that
the availability of land, water and infrastructure is a necessary but insufficient condition. The
gradual combination of four other factors largely explains the positive outcomes in the
situations we studied: (i) the choice of high-value crops; (ii) the arrival of agricultural small
entrepreneurs from northern wilayas,1
who helped diffuse their knowledge of intensive
vegetable cultivation; (iii) the emergence of local farmers (family- or entrepreneur-types) who adopted and adapted intensive cropping systems; (iv) the emergence of local markets and
services (wholesale market for vegetables, suppliers of agricultural inputs and equipment,
mechanized agricultural services). This dynamic is directly linked to the surge of informal land
markets, initially stimulated by the arrival of ‘outsider farmers’. We documented success stories
concerning small and medium size entrepreneurial farms and market-oriented family farms.
Although we have at present no data to compare these types of farms with much larger ones, it
is clear that small and medium-scale production structures are technically and economically
viable and should be encouraged. However, what remains a key issue is the agro-ecological
sustainability of such agricultural model implemented in fragile ecosystems. 
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