Drought-hit Morocco urges people not to buy sheep for Eid al-Adha celebrations
Morocco's King Mohammed VI has urged people not to buy sheep to slaughter during this year's Eid al-Adha festivities due to a huge decline in the country's herd.
In a letter read on state-run Al Aoula television this week, the king said record inflation and climate change were to blame for soaring livestock prices and a shortage of sheep.
"Our commitment to enabling you to fulfil this religious rite under the best conditions is accompanied by the duty to consider the climatic and economic challenges facing our country, which have led to a significant decline in livestock numbers," wrote King Mohammed VI — who is also the north African country's highest religious authority.
"Performing it (the sacrifice) in these difficult circumstances will cause real harm to large segments of our people, especially those with limited income," he added.
Eid al-Adha, which takes place this year in June, is an annual "feast of sacrifice" in which Muslims slaughter livestock to honour a passage of the Qu'ran in which the prophet Ibrahim prepared to sacrifice his son as an act of obedience to God, who intervened and replaced the child with a sheep.
It is a major holiday for millions of Muslims worldwide — from Morocco to Indonesia — with traditions so embedded that families often take out loans in order to buy sheep.
The cost of a sheep can often exceed monthly household earnings in Morocco, where the monthly minimum wage is about 3,000 Moroccan dirhams (€290).
The prices have become so exorbitant that 55% of families surveyed by the NGO Moroccan Center for Citizenship last year said they struggled to cover the costs of purchasing sheep and the utensils needed to prepare them.
The price spikes are driven by increasingly sparse pastures, which offer less grazing room and raise the costs of feed for herders and farmers.
Morocco's agricultural minister said earlier this month that rainfall this season was currently 53% below the last 30 years' annual average, and that sheep and cattle herds had shrunk 38% since 2016, when the country last conducted a livestock census.
The country has in recent years subsidised and imported livestock, including from Romania, Spain and Australia, from which it plans to import 100,000 sheep this year.
In a bid to keep prices steady, Morocco this year removed import duties and VAT on livestock and red meat.
It marks the first time in nearly three decades that Morocco has asked citizens to forgo holiday feasting at Eid al-Adha. Although Morocco has transformed from a largely agrarian nation to a mixed economy whose cities have some of the Middle East and Africa's most modern infrastructure, food prices remain a struggle for many people.
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