Precision agriculture Moroccosmart agriculture Moroccoagritech MoroccoAI4Morocco AgricultureInitiative Génération VerteAI agriculture Moroccosmart irrigation Moroccofood security AI
Introduction
Morocco is an agricultural powerhouse in Africa. With nearly 40% of the active population employed in the sector and an ambitious Green Generation Plan targeting 2030, Moroccan agriculture is both an economic and social pillar—and a sector deeply vulnerable to climate shocks. It is in this context that AI4Morocco launched the Smart Agriculture & Sustainable Lands working group, convinced that artificial intelligence can play a transformative role for Moroccan farmers, from small fellahs in the douars to large operators of irrigated perimeters.
A sector under climate pressure
The figures are concerning. In 2025, water stress in Morocco reaches historic levels in several watersheds. Rainfall during the 2024-2025 agricultural season was 30% below average in some northern regions. Climate change is altering the seasons, disrupting millennia-old crop cycles. In this context, traditional agriculture, which relies on rainfall and the empirical experience of farmers, must necessarily evolve.
Artificial intelligence is not a magic solution, but it offers tangible tools to help farmers make better decisions, consume less, and produce more.
Precision agriculture: farming with intelligence
Precision agriculture uses data—ground sensors, satellite images, weather data, soil analyses—to tailor agricultural interventions at the plot level, or even down to the square meter. Rather than irrigating an entire field uniformly, a precision agriculture system identifies areas experiencing water stress and focuses water where it is truly needed.
The Smart Agriculture group of AI4Morocco is exploring solutions accessible at various scales: from simple mobile applications for small farmers that indicate the right time to irrigate or treat, to complex systems integrating drone imagery for large estates. The key is economic accessibility and ease of use — solutions that work on a smartphone with a 4G connection, in Arabic or Amazigh.
Water management: the absolute urgency
Morocco uses about 87% of its water resources for agriculture. In a country that is among the most threatened by water scarcity in North Africa, optimizing irrigation is a matter of economic and social survival, not just agronomic efficiency.
AI-based smart irrigation systems can reduce water consumption by 20 to 50% while maintaining or improving yields. By analyzing real-time soil moisture data, weather forecasts, and the physiological needs of crops, these systems trigger irrigation at the right time, with the right amount of water, in the right place.
The group is working in partnership with the National Office of Electricity and Drinking Water (ONEE) and several associations of agricultural water users to identify pilot areas in the irrigated perimeters of Gharb, Souss-Massa, and Haouz.
Crop monitoring and early disease detection
Crop diseases and pests cause significant losses each year in Morocco. Wheat blast, the olive fly, and tomato downy mildew—these scourges can decimate an entire harvest in a few weeks if detection is delayed.
AI models trained on images of diseased leaves can detect early signs of infection before they are visible to the naked eye, enabling early and targeted intervention. The Smart Agriculture group is exploring the development of a plant health diagnostic tool adapted to Moroccan crops — an application that would allow a farmer to photograph a leaf with their phone and receive an immediate diagnosis and treatment recommendations.
National Food Security
Beyond the individual plot, AI offers modeling tools at the national scale to anticipate risks of food shortages, optimize agricultural supply chains, and better manage strategic stockpiles. In the context of international tensions on cereal markets—as observed during the 2022 Russo-Ukrainian crisis—the ability to accurately model national food scenarios is a matter of sovereignty.
The group is working in this direction with academic partners from the Hassan II Agronomic and Veterinary Institute (IAV) and Mohammed VI Polytechnic University (UM6P), which have recognized expertise in agricultural modeling and environmental sciences.
Join the Smart Agriculture Group
This group is particularly open to agronomists, agricultural engineering engineers, developers specialized in computer vision, geographers and remote sensing specialists, as well as field actors — agricultural cooperatives, aggregators, regional agricultural development offices. It is this diversity of profiles that makes the AI4Morocco community unique: AI is not done for the sake of AI, but is put at the service of concrete challenges.
AH
Author
AI HUB Editorial
Research Desk
