Do forgive me, but this little post about the Draa Valley in Morocco should have been before my post on Ait Benhaddou, but I'm getting my routes confused and I am already a week or so behind. I am actually writing this on the way to the ferry at Tangier Med to return to Spain!

First of all, the photos I took of the Draa Valley were taken through the windscreen, so don't adequately convey the palms that stuff the valley. So here's a photo from a travel site that shows what it should look like.

The thing is, even the above photo doesn't tell the entire truth. Many of the palmeries or palm plantations are dying due to lack of water and drought. I say both because the dam at Ouarrzazate allows water into the valley a few times a year but modern irrigation has messed with traditional irrigation that has been happening in the valley for thousands of years. Combine that with drought and you have a sad story indeed.

To access water, farmers dig their wells ever deeper, with no subsidy for the concrete and reinforcing and labour needed to do so. Some palmeries are simply abandoned due to labour migration where the young leave for jobs in tourism in places like Marrakech or go to get an education to become skilled workers, leaving the traditional farming behind. The job is left to the old who have no savings and no other way to make money, so will do it til they die.

Furthermore, some have left date faming to farm watermelons which is a far more lucrative crop - yet is incredibly water intensive and demands expensive pesticides, so farmers get into debt setting up a crop especially if they haven't been able to sell it the previous year. As they are in seasonal competition with the north, and further away from the ports to Europe, this is often the case.

All of this information is available online if you'd like to read further, but for me it reinforced the need to research where your food comes from. Sure, the farmers may gamble quite the profit from watermelon farming but at what cost?

The date market too cannot be guaranteed - again, market forces determine whether they are sold or not.

It's interesting to read all of this but still see life seemingly thriving. Old adobe buildings crumble as new brick ones are built and painted in desert colours so you wouldn't know underneath is concrete

We stop and buy some dates on the way. They've formed a big part of our diet. We don't eat a lot of sweets so having a bag of dates on the dashboard helps when we need sustenance. I honestly can't imagine my life without dates so it's interesting to read about how they are farmed and the lives that are built around the date palms in valleys such as the Draa.

We pass some spectacular gorges and views down to Ouarazate, where we meet friends for dinner before the next day before heading to Ait Ben Haddou. Every drive in Morocco is am interesting one, it seems.

With Love,

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