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Tebboune orders sweeping overhaul of agriculture after autumn potato shortage

10 November 2026 · Algeria Now

President Abdelmadjid Tebboune on Sunday ordered a broad restructuring of Algerian agriculture, banning fallow land and the use of green maize as animal feed, creating new state bodies and tightening controls on imported food. The decisions, announced after a Council of Ministers meeting, follow this autumn's potato shortage, which exposed weaknesses in how farm output is counted, stored and distributed.

What the president decided

Agriculture Minister Sid Ali Khaldi presented a detailed report on the sector, an item first scheduled for the council of 4 October, the presidency said. Mr Tebboune welcomed it and issued a series of instructions.

A new local organization plan is to make the sector more transparent and its census more precise, and a statistics service covering all agricultural activities and trades is to be set up immediately. A new office for dried legumes will be created, while cereals stay under the Algerian Interprofessional Cereals Office (OAIC). The ministry will be reorganized, with fisheries handled by a minister-delegate and forests by a secretary of state.

Preparations for the next harvest must start in November, with machinery available in every production zone. The president banned leaving farmland fallow and banned green maize as livestock fodder, saying the practice had not improved meat production and had caused a shortage of grain maize. He also ordered action against hoarding of produce and against fraud from production to distribution, noting that the state has opened the way to buying strategic harvests at the best prices.

Tighter checks at the border

The council also turned to imports. Ministries must feed their statistics into the national digital platform run by the High Commissioner for Digitization. The number of quality-control laboratories at ports and airports, currently two, is to rise, with priority for Oran, Mostaganem, Ghazaouet, Jijel and Annaba. Once they are in place, the justice minister is to strengthen the legal framework with maximum penalties for deliberately bringing harmful products into the country.

What comes next

The package is an attempt to give the state better data and firmer levers over a sector Algeria wants to make a pillar of food security. The test will lie in the implementing texts. A fallow ban, for instance, will have to be reconciled with dry-land cereal farming, where leaving land idle for a season has traditionally been used to conserve moisture.

Mr Khaldi must return to the Council of Ministers with a new report on how the recommendations are applied and on the effects of the agricultural orientation law. He launched the 2026-27 ploughing season in Tiaret on 3 November, so the first practical answers on machinery and inputs should come within weeks.

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Tebboune orders sweeping overhaul of agriculture after autumn potato shortage

What the president decided

Tighter checks at the border

What comes next

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