XIX. To Kairouan and Beyond…

My colleague, Mehdi Ben Mimoun, who is a Pomology professor at the Institut nationale agronomique de Tunisie (INAT, Tunisian National Agronomic Institute), organized an amazing program of visits for me. Mehdi did part of his PhD at Davis, and Louise Ferguson connected me with him…what a blessing. He and his colleagues have been incredible hosts in Tunisia! He's the one to the left (of me and the camel) in the picture. 

I’ve visited orchards of all kinds, mostly citrus though, in many different areas of the country. Mehdi organized the tours, and typically the owner/manager/director comes and gets me (and sometime Mehdi) and takes us out for the visit, and often feeds us lunch as well!!

I’ve also had a chance to talk with a lot of people involved in citrus research, extension, and production, as well as seeing a lot of countryside. I gave two presentations at the Institute, on citrus in California, and small scale production in the foothills, and a second one on extension in California. They were very well received, and we had a really good discussion with a lot of questions both times...the questions lasted longer than the presentations!  It was all in French (including my presentations), so after a couple of hours, my French would start to deteriorate, and Mehdi would close the proceedings.

Just to let you all know that I was thinking about you, this is the front slide of the presentation. They liked the pictures of all of you. Dan, they thought you might be Tunisian, and they wanted to know if you had any Tunis sheep!

There were some people from the ministry of Agriculture at the extension presentation, and the director of Extension asked me to come to the Ministry and give the presentation again for their staff.  I gave that presentation the day before I left.  It was very interesting, about 30 people who work in the Ministry of Agriculture in the Extension division attended.  Most were very interested in what I had to say, and thought some of my ideas would be helpful.  A few were not happy to hear that our system is not centrally controlled, and that what I extend depends on my growers' needs, not what the government wants extended. However, I was pleased to be asked, as it indicated that they were open to new ideas.  And a number of the people attending asked if they could correspond by e-mail, so I think what I said got them thinking.  It was very interesting!

Back to Kaiouan and Regueb.  Monsieur Sahbi Majoub, who is a partner in one of the largest fruit companies in Tunisia, took Mehdi and me down to Regueb, via Kairouan. Regueb is in the southern part of Tunisia, but not the "far south". It is much drier than the northern coastal areas, and did not have much crop agriculture until the last few years - it was grazing land.

Then they found that there were quite large aquifers with high quality water, for Tunisia. All the water in Tunisia is somewhat to extremely saline, so good water is a relative term…especially compared to our water in the foothills. Anyway, about 12 years ago people started buying land and planting orchards in the area of Regueb and Maknassy. M. Sahbi has several, with citrus, grapes and stone fruit. We visited several citrus orchards…the oldest one, a 12 year old lemon orchard, plus many newer ones.

The trip takes you south, partly along the eastern coast below the Cap Bon Peninsula, then inland to the city of Kairouan, and then south again. Kairouan is an old, walled city, where the Arabs bringing Islam built their first mosque in North Africa. n.b. Maghrebis (North Africans) do not consider Egypt to be part of North Africa – it is much more closely linked to the Middle East culturally and otherwise. It used to be forbidden to non-Muslims, and is considered a holy city for Muslims. It is famous for carpet making, but I didn't really have time to check them out.

It was a bit of adventure early in the day, after zooming down the “autoroute” to end up in a walled city with cobblestone streets. We had breakfast at a tiny fitayra shop in the medina (old City). Ftayra is a kind of dough made from semolina that is worked like pizza dough, and then deep fried very quickly. It can have an egg in it or be garnished with onions, or just plain. It is only made for breakfast and the shop closes by 10 AM. The shop was tiny so there was a crowd of men standing out front eating the hot fried ftayra. We did the same, then washed the oil off our hands at the sink in the front of the shop.

After breakfast, we walked through to an open square, which Mehdi’s wife, who is an architect, helped restore. It was quite lovely (see photo right).

There is an old Arab tower/building that housed the well for the city, with a camel that walks around and around to turn a vertical wheel with clay jars on it to pull up the water. It’s very similar to the nuria water wheels in Egypt. I had read about it and it sounded horrible, because apparently the camel lives there its whole life. It was not as bad as it sounded. It’s open to the air and sun on one side, and very clean and neat. The water was fresh and good…I’ve not had any problems with drinking Tunisian water, which is very high quality. It is apparently a real tourist attraction, although we were the only ones there on that morning. The picture at the top of this post was taken there.

After our brief visit to Kaiouan, we set off for Regueb, arriving late morning at one of M. Sahbi’s farms. It had a few acres of citrus, but mostly table grapes. Then we stopped in town to order grilled lamb for lunch at a tiny hole in the wall restaurant.

The restaurant was next to this vegetable and fruit shop...I was blown away by the variety and quality of the produce, as Regueb seemed to be somewhat isolated...but there are good roads, and it was only about three hours from Tunis.  Somehow it reminded me of towns from my Peace Corps days, but I think there were a lot more amenities there than there were in the towns I remember!

The citrus in this area is still quite young, and I think the growers are just figuring out how to grow it there. The climatic conditions are entirely different than most of the areas where citrus is grown here, so they are used to dealing with a humid climate and all the attendant issues. The interesting thing is that they have maintained many of the same practices. I was surprised to see that they were disking very deeply between the rows, even into the root zone of the trees. It was very dusty, and given the propensity for winds, it was perfect mite habitat, and they had serious mite problems. When I asked the grower why, he couldn’t give me an answer other than that it was the way citrus was grown (elsewhere!).

So I (diplomatically – I’m much more diplomatic in French!) suggested that if he stopped cultivation and just mowed the weeds, he’d have fewer mite problems. Several orchards did not have windbreaks, and suffered flower drop and thus uneven fruit production. And some were very nutrient stressed, especially when the soil was very sandy. I able to offer some suggestions on windbreaks, mulching, and irrigation management to help them, which made me feel useful! It’s not that I know any more than they do, it’s just that I look at things differently, and can suggest practices that they might not have considered.

There were several orchards that looked very healthy, including M. Sahbi’s citrus. The major reasons why they are trying to grow citrus in that region is that there is good water and that since it has never had citrus it does not have mal secco, a disease that is deadly to lemons. Lemons are the highest value fruit in Tunisia, and it is very difficult to grow them anymore in any of the traditional coastal regions, so they are planting in the Regueb area.

After we visited a couple of orchards, we went back to town for lunch.  Lunch was cut up lamb cooked on a barbecue, seasoned with salt and pepper and lemon juice.  It was delicious...served in big bowls and eaten with your fingers! We ate at a big kitchen table in the back room of the restaurant, with five ag engineers who manage the various orchards in the area. Most of the orchard owners are absentee landowners, so they hire these young ag engineers to manage them.  They were all young men, in their late twenties and early thiries, and a couple had been Mehdi's students. They live out at the farms and obviously get together in town from time to time, but it was clearly a big deal to get invited to lunch and show us around their orchards.  Dessert was Clementine mandarins and navels from M. Sahbi's orchard. And they were really good as well.

We continued on to several more orchards...both young and older (12 years!) and then, as the sun was setting, headed back north.  We stopped again in Kairouan to see the mosque and so M. Sahbi could pray.  The minaret is lit at night and quite beautiful. We also stopped to buy the date pastries for which Kairouan is famous.  M. Sahbi gave me a whole box, which I shared with some of the hotel staff on the feast day and I brought some back to the States...some of you may get the chance to raise your blood sugar with a few!

We arrived back in Tunis around 8 PM...a long day, but very interesting and a real chance to see the Tunisian countryside.  Things were so well programmed in Tunisia that I am just now catching up on my posts...I never had time because Mehdi planned so much fo me. 

XVIII. Sheep, sheep everywhere…

27 November 2009

Sheep in the shop, sheep at the police station, sheep on the balcony, sheep running away...
Here in Tunisia (and across the Muslim world), today is the biggest feast of the Muslim calendar, Eid Il Adha, or Feast of the Sacrifice. It’s also known in other countries as Bayram, Tabaski, and generally as Eid il Kibir…the big feast. It commemorates Abraham (Ibrahim in Arabic)’s willingness to sacrifice his son. Every Muslim family who can afford it has bought a sheep that is killed and eaten today and tomorrow.

For the last week, there have been sheep tied up everywhere...in the doorways of shops, at the police station, and wandering the grounds of the Ag Institute. On the building around the corner from me, there are sheep on the little balconies in a nest of straw on the 2nd and 3rd floors (look carefully at the balconies in the lower left and the center top of the photo). We're talking sheep, not lambs...they have to be at least a year old, and in good shape, so they are not really small.  The sheep on the top balcony apparently was not well-looked after...he was missing his bale of straw! 

Apparently, no matter how long you have the sheep for – a week or a day, it needs a whole bale of straw with it at all times. I think it must be people’s idea of keeping the sheep in good health and happy until they’re killed. Last night, when I went to the local supermarket (which was crazier than on Thanksgiving eve in the US), I saw a compact car…a Fiat or something, so a VERY compact car, parked out front with a bale of hay on the back seat and a sheep standing on the floor behind the front seats! I kid you not!

The sheep tied with a string to the shop door were cute with their bales of hay, but by mid-morning today, any which had not been slaughtered knew what was coming. And there were bags of straw everywhere.

I  walked around the Medina this morning, which was lovely as there was no one there. I could see all the buildings (and doors!) I’ve not seen before. I have walked by this very nice building at least ten times before, but never saw how beautiful it was because of all the merchandise and people blocking it. I was taking a picture of it, when this big ram comes charging along the cross street, and disappears around a corner. A guy standing on the street tried to grab the ram's horns as he went by, but missed. Then four big guys come tearing after it, and disappear as well. I stood there for a couple minutes to see if they came back with the sheep, but they didn’t…wonder if he escaped? 

As I sit here writing this, Tunisian bagpipe music is playing outside, but almost no other noise – no cars or other city noise. The whole city is shut down for the feast, and the streets are almost deserted. It is very peaceful with everyone at home for the feast.

I was invited to Mehdi's parents for the feast this afternoon. I asked several of my Tunisian colleagues what to bring - the women said cake. However, Mehdi said flowers because when we went to the south two days ago, in Kairouan his uncle bought a lot of sweet pastries for the feast. They are called "pinched" because there are dates inside a crust that is pinched together. They are fried and then drenched in honey, guaranteed to spike your blood sugar!

So, yesterday afternoon, I went down by the port where the flower sellers are, and bought a nice bouquet of roses and carnations and some very sweet smelling leaves, that the vendor put together while I was standing there. As I walked back to my hotel, a woman and several men asked me for them. When I got to the hotel, the bartender pretended like they were for him. The bartender was nice enough to find and loan me a vase to keep them overnight. This afternoon as I was walking out to meet Mehdi, several other men asked for them and a deaf man sweeping the street made gestures for me to give them to him! I guess it was a suitable bouquet for the 'Eid!

'Eid il Kibir is a lot like Thanksgiving, in that people pretty much eat themselves into a coma. Mehdi’s parents live in a nice little villa with a walled yard in a quartier of Tunis near the lake. When we got there about 2 PM, his mother was barbequing lamb, and Mehdi took over to do sausage and some other stuff. It was a beautiful, sunny day, warm enough to be outside with a sweater. We ate outside on a raised patio, which had blue, white, and green Tunisian tile work on three sides. There were lemon and orange trees in the garden, and it was very pleasant.

The meal was an experience! There were plates of at least six different cuts of meat, and some beef as well as the mutton. It was very good, although not quite Dan Macon’s lamb! I was expecting something more like the mixed bag of small pieces cut up and grilled like I’d had in Kairouan earlier in the week, but there were chops, cutlets, and a bunch of other things. I was sort of wondering how they’d gotten all that meat off one sheep, and then they showed me the actual sheep meat. Most of what was cooked they had bought ahead so they wouldn’t spend the whole day preparing the sheep! They were going to cook the rest of it over the next few days. I guess that has become common, as otherwise it can take the hole day to prepare the meal.

The feast continues tomorrow with more meat and a lot of pastries. Anyway, most of what we had was meat…I don’t think I’ve ever eaten so much meat at one sitting. The accompaniments were harissa, the Tunisian hot sauce; a bit of grilled peppers, French fries and breads. I was surprised that there were not salads, though, as usually the Tunisians eat salads. When we were all sufficiently torpid from too much food, we moved into the living room and had sweet tea and Tunisian cookies!

I had a really interesting conversation with Mehdi’s mother about Tunisian history and culture. It was nice to hear about her memories of growing up in Djerba, an island off the southern coast. Tunisia, like Morocco, has always had a Jewish population, and she talked about how they had specific professions in the community, but said were always considered to be as Tunisian as any Muslims. During World War II, since Tunisia was a French Protectorate, it was under the control of Vichy France, so they were rounding up Jews as well. She said that Tunisians hid a lot of their Jews in the city of Kairouan, as it had been forbidden to non-Muslims, so no Europeans went there. Interesting historical tidbit!

We were there until about 6 PM, and when Mehdi and his family dropped me off, they were heading to his wife, Narja’s family, where Mehdi told me they would eat again! And more tomorrow! Yikes! Eid mubarak! or Eid mabruk! (they both mean happy feast!)

XVII. Visions of Tunisia

22 November 2009

I haven't posted anything for a while - I was on vacation for most of the first two weeks of November - my last week in Morocco and the first week in Tunisia. My Mother came to visit and we played tourist for two weeks. I've been so busy since then, I have been too tired at night to pull anything together.

Tunisia is probably not a familiar place to most of you…so, a little geography lesson to start. Tunisia is in North Africa, a tiny country between Algeria to the west and Libya to the east. The capital is Tunis, and in Arabic, that’s also the name of the country تونس. (map is from Lonely Planet).  It has a lot of coastline (like California and Maine, and resort areas along that coast. Inland, and to the south is desert - the Sahara.

Tunisia has been colonized by pretty much everyone from ancient times to the present, the Phoenicians, the Romans, the Arabs, Ottomans, etc. It is the home of Carthage (Roman baths at Carthage in the picture to the right), Utica, and other major historical sites. The last colonial power was the French, so people speak French as a second language, although a few speak some English. The people are a mixture of all those who invaded the area, and are very open and hospitable. Although they share a history, languages and culture, Tunisia is really quite different from Morocco.

In area, Tunisia is a little smaller than Florida, and it has a long agricultural history…about 4,000 years of it. I’m sure they haven’t been growing citrus quite that long, but they have been certainly been growing olives, pomegranates, and wheat for several millennia. It is a beautiful country with many similarities to California…mountains, desert, sea, a Mediterranean climate, etc. And a wonderful people. I’ll talk more about the people I’ve met in another post…this one is for tourists!

Tunis is now a city of about 1.5 million people and the traffic attests to that. Nevertheless, there are some very nice green spaces, and one of the main avenues, Habib Bourguiba, is tree lined It has a wide central median which is perfect for a stroll.

The street looks like a Parisian avenue, with its trees, sidewalk cafes, and architecture. Most of the buildings were built during the French Protectorate, and they are very lovely. It is clearly a major gathering place for Tunis citadines, who spend a lot of time in the cafes and strolling. Tunisians have adapted the avenue as their own, and stroll, they do. November 7th is a national holiday, so it is all decorated with lights for that...really beautiful.

What is more traditionally Tunisian, though, and the biggest tourist attraction, is the Tunis medina and its souqs (markets). This is the old part of the city, not walled as Taroudannt and Meknes were, but still with gates - the Sea Gate, the Green Gate, the New Gate, etc.

The medina is full of old palaces and covered markets…a different one for each traditional craft…copper, leather, the red felted wool hats known as chechia…skull caps similar to what we call a fez (from Fez in Morocco), but not as high and more closely fitting. Apparently the chechia was brought back to Tunisia when the Andalusian Arabs were expelled from Spain.

The interesting thing is that here some men, particularly older ones, still wear chechias. It’s hard to take pictures of people here as they don’t like it, so I don't have a great chechia picture. This one is from the Marche centrale...a farmers' market in the middle of Tunis, and quite an experience.  Anyway, it's the best picture of a man wearing a chechia that I have...except I haven't seen many with pompoms.  Click on the picture to enlarge it and see his hat.

After several lengthy taxi rides from gates to the medina on the other side from where I’m staying, I’ve decided that that might be a good way to get some people pictures. You’re moving slowly (the traffic is horrendous!), and people don’t pay much attention to taxis. So I'm trying that next.

When you imagine exotic bazaars in the East, the Tunis souqs are they. Most are covered, often dimly lit, mazes of little shops. They sell everything, gold, silver, copper, carpets, pottery, spices, clothing, tourist junk, etc. You just have to find the right souq. Easier said than done, though. Many streets lead nowhere or bend back on themselves, and they may intersect with another street multiple times, so it’s incredibly easy to get lost in the medina.

Streets are narrow with high walls on either side, so it's very difficult to see very far ahead and figure out where you are in relation to where you want to go.  It's an adventure, to say the least.  I learned that it's not good to go in with a strict plan of where I want to go...because I may not get there or it may take a very long time and a roundabout way to get there.  The lesson is to enjoy the getting there and not just focus on the destination.  We saw some beautiful places that way.

The first time we ventured into the medina, we took a street that, on the map, looked (comparatively) large and somewhat straightforward…hah! The shops spill out into the streets and often there is barely room for two people to pass in the “street”.

It’s kind of like swimming in a mob, you can just be carried along with the crowd. That bazaar must have been the party bazaar---there were decorations, ribbons, glittery stuff, artificial flowers, and all the silver and gold gilt stuff so essential to weddings in this part of the world. We found the tenturiers souq another day…the dyers bazaar, except that in these modern times, it’s the jeans souq…more kinds, shapes, and sizes of jeans (and other clothing) than you can imagine.

Once you can find your way through the maze in the medina, there are some really interesting things to see…some lovely mosques (all but one closed to non-Muslims), old palaces, some of which are now museums, and a multiplicity of beautifully decorated doors…mostly blue, but occasionally yellow or another color.

 

As the pictures show you, I really like the doors! They are brightly painted and decorated with nail heads, and often have stone archways. The rest of the walls are pretty much plain white, so the doors really stand out.

 At one of the former palaces, Dar El Othman, (the yellow door in the courtyard above) the watchman gave us a lesson in what all the symbols mean...very interesting, and representing the crossroads that Tunisia has been for millenia.

Among the major sites around Tunis is Carthage, which has more ruins than our (my Mom’s & my) somewhat jaded Greek and Roman ruin palate could handle. It's a beautiful town thirty minutes away by small suburban train.

Carthage is a great place to walk…the ruins are not all in one place, so unless you’re on a tour, you have to walk! We enjoyed it, but having seen Roman ruins in numerous other countries, we did not do a very thorough job of seeing it all. But the seacoast was lovely, and we had a great lunch in a little café. A very memorable pumpkin soup and the Tunisian version of a Caesar salad…with Roquefort and walnuts…yummy!

The train stations in the suburbs are very pretty with bright blue wooden awnings, and many residents use them for regular commuting. On our return trip to Tunis, there were numerous architecture students who had been on a field trip sketching the ruins. I really liked the idea that we stopped at "Hannibal" Station...yes, the Hannibal of elephant fame was a Carthaginian!

In Tunis proper (called “Le Grand Tunis”) an amazing museum, the Bardo, is full of incredibly well preserved Roman mosaics from sites around the country. Having taken several mosaic classes last year, I really appreciated the work and the artistry that went into them…tiny pieces of colored stone no more then a ¼ inch square, and often smaller, used to draw incredibly detailed pictures that would have been like carpets on Roman floors. Some of them were so well done, that you didn’t realize until you were very close up that it wasn’t a painting, but a mosaic. There were some mosaic animals, oxen in particular, in which the musculature was so clearly defined by the mosaic pieces that they seemed three dimensional. The Bardo is housed in a former palace, and between the number and intricacy of the mosaics and the architecture, it is more than a feast for the eyes…an artistic over-eater’s paradise!

Sidi Bou Saïd is another nearby attraction…It is a blue and white seaside village built on several hills overlooking the Mediterranean. It is very peaceful and pleasant. As in most towns in Tunisia, the buildings are all whitewashed a blinding bright white, but in Sidi Bou Saïd , they are only allowed to have blue trim. Most of it is a bright blue, with a hint of turquoise, but some residents have taken a little liberty and their doors, windows, and decorative metal work are slightly different shades of blue. It is lovely to see…lots of picturesque scenes and nice restaurants. Also, a lot of shops catering to tourists, but the shop denizens seemed less aggressive than in Tunis.

There was an apartment for rent in one of the houses overlooking the Mediterranean, and I was very tempted to see what it would cost to live there. I’d like to live where the bougainvillea blooms all year, in a blue and white house with lacy ironwork balconies! The Tunisians tell me that they dream of living in California! We all need dreams!

XVI. Vegetables and Pest Management

29 October 2009

The primary purpose for this trip is to learn about citrus. However, when faculty at the Institute heard that I also work with vegetables, they decided I should also learn about vegetable production in Morocco. It has been very enlightening, so..let's talk about vegetables...

I’ve mentioned before that tomato production in Morocco has been very difficult this year due to a recently arrived invasive pest called Tuta absoluta…sometimes called “absolute disaster”. It’s a small brown moth, not more than ¼” long. The larvae mine the leaves and then start eating on the fruit.

Here's an example of a couple of mines...this is minor damage...because the pest is excluded, but in an open field, the entire leaf can be covered in mines.Tuta absoluta has destroyed thousands of hectares of open field tomato production.

T. absoluta originated in South America and moved into Morocco late last year from Spain. It has moved into all the vegetable growing regions very quickly. Interestingly, one of the things I’ve heard from some students and others is that they think that it came from Israel…intentionally! Israel is a real sore point and some media people choose to fan the flames with nonsense like this, which then spreads among the population rapidly.

Over the past couple of weeks I've visited a number of vegetable production operations and packing houses (not just citrus!), and Tuta absoluta is a major issue. However, in this area, most vegetable production is not open field, but protected cultivation. A different kind…high tunnels, but not covered with plastic, but with a very, very fine mesh to exclude pests.

The use of mesh may have started with banana production, and now it seems most of the tomatoes, peppers, and summer squash/zucchini in this area are produced in the tunnels. They call them serres, which in French means glasshouse or greenhouse, even though they are more like “nethouses”.

It is high quality vegetable production, and, like the citrus, mainly for export. The farms I’ve visited use IPM techniques, and some of them are “biologique” the European version of certified organic.

They use bumblebees for pollination and pheromones for monitoring and mass trapping, as well as releasing natural enemies within the houses. They also use Bt for the larvae and sulfur for Tomato russet mite.

I’ve been told that they grow tomatoes in the same place for 4-5 years, then change to a different crop. I asked about soil diseases and nematodes, and was told it wasn’t that big a problem(!!). But…I have seen some pretty heavy duty soil sterilants stockpiled in the fertigation stations of several of the operations, so they must have some really different regulations for “biologique” than we do!

As a result of Tuta absoluta, the net houses are carefully managed. They repair any tears immediately, painting over them with a kind of glue, and keep them as closed as possible.

Getting into most of the houses is quite an effort. It’s like trying to get into an envelope…three times, with the flap going in different directions each time. There is a with a rubber band along the edge of the curtain to snap it back in place, and a very narrow space to get through. It’s very awkward; you have to be very skinny or very agile to move quickly through them.

I don’t think the system is very convenient for workers, but they seem to be doing pretty well at excluding the moth. It apparently rides in on worker clothing, boxes, etc., so it takes vigilance.

They use the pheromones religiously…both for monitoring and mass trapping. It costs about $5.50 per ampoule, and it has to be changed every 3 weeks. They have water traps about every 50 m (165 feet) in the houses - with the pheromone, sometimes with an insecticide in the water to kill them if they don't drown first.

A couple days ago I visited a farm called Ourika with an entomology professor from the Institute, and they had a much better system. They had three self-contained rooms with traps for the moth in each one. You enter one, close the doors and then enter the next, etc. They were big enough that a small delivery truck could drive in, the vegetable lugs could be loaded and then it could drive out. The whole house was also covered with not just one layer of netting, but two. When we arrived, I wondered why I couldn’t see into them very well, and that was the reason.

With two layers, tears in the netting are not as critical. If the tomato foliage touches the inner layer, it is unlikely that the moth would be able to lay its eggs through both layers. Apparently with just one layer, they have to be very careful to keep foliage away from the netting or the moth lays its eggs through the net.

They are growing mostly “grape” type tomatoes, i.e. 4-5 salad size or 8-10 cherry/grape size on a cluster. The large ones are picked mostly red, packed in the cluster and sold that way. Ones which become detached from the cluster or do not have a calyx are sold on local markets. The fruit look very nice, but I’ve bought them in the market…they don’t come close to field grown for flavor. They are okay, but I wouldn’t want them in season!

They are grown in soil, and the net houses have more air movement than plastic, but they are pretty hot and muggy. I think it’s the whole fertigation regime and probably the varieties selected for shipping that mean little flavor.

The pepper varieties I’ve seen include California Wonder, a poblano-type, and a Serrano type pepper. The squash is mostly just ordinary zucchini, and boy does it grow fast…they said the squash grows 3 cm (about 1¼”) per day. They harvest it between 18 and 24 cm (7 to 9 ½”)…but some of them were very fat for the length…again, not my choice for top quality, but they said the buyer sets the standards.

I think we’ve infected the world with a desire for bigger fruits and vegetables…everything, probably…but the quality is not necessarily better! The last farm with the better nethouse system exports primarily to England, the others to France and other European countries. I don’t think any of the vegetables went to the States. They would certainly meet our supermarket standards, though. And with so much of the open field tomato crop destroyed this year; these guys will probably be supplying most of Morocco as well. They really jumped on the bandwagon to deal with the pest immediately, before it caused damage and have succeeded.

This pest issue demonstrates that growers who keep abreast of emerging pest issues and plan for them can succeed where others have failed dismally. Not that we can (or want to) grow any significant acreage of citrus in net houses, but certainly nurseries could produce planting stock that way. And growers need to make use of any available tools to fight. I think the whole pheromone deal was brand new to many of these growers, but they figured it out in a hurry.
Lesson for growers (and pretty much everybody in today’s world): Know what’s on the horizon, be prepared and take every measure possible to exclude it, and then deal with it when it comes!

XV. Food…Moroccan…and generic…

27 October 2009

As I sit here at the Institute at a quarter to two in the afternoon, my thoughts turn to lunch and food in general. In Morocco, the main meal is eaten at noon…and it is main, believe me. Most days I wait to eat until I get home because lunch at the cafeteria is a little too much food for me, if I intend to get anything done in the afternoon. Not that it’s not really good, just a set menu and way too much of it!

Moroccan food is generally really tasty…I haven’t had any bad food. Some is a bit bland, but a lot has been really good. From my experience Moroccan food is mainly tajines, couscous, or pastilla. Tajine or tagine, but the g is pronounced like a zh is a stew-like dish cooked in a ceramic pot directly over the flame. They can be made with lamb, chicken, fish or just vegetables…all of them usually have some vegetables in them. I have had a number of them and most are very tasty. The ones I like best have some kind of dried fruit-apricots, prunes or raisins, and often nuts as a garnish. Fruit and meat go so nicely together. I also love the preserved lemons that are sometimes used as garnish.

You are probably all familiar with couscous – in the States it’s made from durum wheat. Here, it can be made from wheat, barley or corn, or a combination of them. It will usually have vegetables and meat in a heap on top of it, often with the vegetables hiding the meat…like a secret ingredient, so you don’t know what it is until you uncover it! (There is meat hiding under the vegetables in the picture.) The secret to good Moroccan couscous is steaming it three times, which is pretty labor intensive, so it is traditionally a special dish…a Friday dish. Friday is when they go to the mosque - except it isn’t a day off here, although many businesses close at 1 PM so people can go pray. Morocco has a Saturday/Sunday weekend, which is different from much of the Islamic world, which usually has Thursday/Friday, or Friday/ Saturday, or where there is a significant Christian population, Friday and Sunday.

Pastilla - I have only had a few, although I saw online that there is a restaurant that specializes in them in Agadir, which I need to find. Pastilla is this enormous flaky pastry, stuffed with meat or fish. The best one I’ve had was at the fig conference…I think it was lamb, but it was seasoned with cinnamon and raisins and was a little bit sweet…I really liked it, despite the fact that I’m often picky about sweet things. They are really beautiful to look at as well. Again, I think they are labor intensive to make, so most restaurants don’t make them unless you order ahead of time.

Every morning I have breakfast at the café attached to the guesthouse where I'm staying. It consists of baguettes sliced in half and toasted, with butter, jam, and ‘Vache-qui-rit ‘cheese’, freshly squeezed Valencia orange juice, and strong coffee with milk.
I’ve had variations on this breakfast at most of the places I’ve stayed. Bread features greatly in all breakfasts...and at every other meal. There are baguettes of french bread, but far more common are a number of versions of round breads cooked on a flat surface...either quite thin, about twice as thick as a pita in the states, or 1" or more thick. They are mostly wheat, but may have barley or other grains in them as well. I like the mixed grain ones...more like whole grain bread. Here are pictures of Berber women making two kinds of bread.

Some places breakfast also includes pain au chocolat, sometimes a crepe-like pancake, and occasionally what seems like a fried phyllo dough pancake. At the Ryad in Meknès, I also had Moroccan doughnuts, which are like raised doughnuts, but not sweet at all. Coffee or tea is standard, as is the fresh squeezed orange juice. I don’t think I have had any processed orange juice since I have been here. At one or two of the big hotels, they have also served peach or other juice…bottled in Morocco, and quite tasty. Since Valencia season is over, this week the orange juice has changed to apple or banana "juice". It's more like a smoothie made with milk and bananas or apples. I had banana this morning...quite good, but a little sweet...I think they add sugar.

Agadir is a tourist place, a resort town, and while it is nice to be able to have something other than tajine or couscous, it seems like a lot of the food is pretty generic European. And it tastes generic, not anything really interesting or exciting or different...just kind of bland. The best thing I have had in Agadir in a restaurant is a hamburger and fries at the restaurant attached to the guesthouse. I think they make the hamburgers with kufta meat, which has spices and bread crumbs (or something) in it, so it’s really good.

I did have some really good calamari last night at a nearby restaurant, but it was only 1/3 of the plate, the rest was utterly unseasoned rice, and very tasteless vegetables. I think the cook spent all his effort on the squid and had no time for the rest. So while I’d give the squid an A, the rest was C-, so it barely made it to B-. Picky, picky!

One of the things that disturbs me here, (and it seems in Europe, as well) is that they have followed the American model of vegetable and fruit production…to the detriment of taste. Many of the vegetables you can find in local markets are packing house rejects. Not that they aren’t fine, they are certainly not culls, but they didn’t meet some export specification, so they are sold on the local market. At least when it comes to citrus and tomatoes, that means they are harvested mature green. The citrus are treated with ethylene to give them color, but they don’t taste like much. Neither do the tomatoes…they are very pretty to look at, but have no taste. The reject tomatoes from the packinghouse tend to be the redder ones which won’t survive shipping, but they just haven’t any flavor.

I’m hoping as the mandarin season goes on, there will be more tree ripe mandarins on the market…When I was here six years ago, I remember the taste of the mandarins as being excellent. The best ones I’ve had so far came from an irrigation experiment at the Institute…so they may have been somewhat stressed – like ours, and so had more flavor. The ones in the market have been very disappointing overall.

Some of what is happening here as well is that they are changing from their traditional sour orange rootstock (bigaradier) to Citrus macrophylla in order to get earlier production, and to give tolerance to calcareous soils. But it is definitely to the detriment of flavor…all the macrophylla fruit I’ve tried seems pretty bland. The trees may start producing a year or two earlier, but I wouldn’t put my name on the fruit flavor. The fruit doesn’t seem to have the aromatics which I can smell in the bigaradier fruit even though the it is not yet tree ripe.

So the export market requirements are driving production, and it’s the same as it has been in the US – quantity vs. quality. I have talked about the importance we put on flavor and quality to a number of people, but most don’t really understand. They are looking at volume and getting it to overseas markets. However, most are pretty clear that the macrophylla fruit is not desirable in local markets because of the lack of flavor. They still have over 90% of their mandarins on sour orange, so macrophylla hasn’t taken over yet, but every new planting I’ve seen is on it. They may learn the same lesson that we have…quantity is not always the answer to economics.

XIV. "Cabbage" and Mandarins

19 October 2009

Kabbage Souss (pronounced kah-baahzh soose, not the way it looks!) is the name of one of the biggest mandarin producers in Taroudannt. I’d seen trucks with the name on it, and thought oh, cabbage! A number of people had mentioned “kah-baahzh” orchards to me, that I must visit them. But…I didn’t put the two together until I went with Dr. El Othmani to visit Kabbage Souss Orchards. It’s another name I really like the sound of…Kabbage sounds so much more sophisticated than plain old cabbage. Of course the names have nothing to do with each other, except for the close spelling.

Anyway, Kabbage Souss is right near the city of Taroudannt, in a pretty much uninhabited area that looks like waste ground. The area is very arid, with little vegetation – even few Argan trees, and it is heavily eroded. You drive over dirt roads that seem to lead nowhere, until suddenly you see all this green…the citrus orchards. One of Dr. El Othmani’s former students works there, so he gave us the grand tour.

They have 400 hectares of citrus…about 1000 acres, mostly mandarins, and some oranges. They go through the season with an array of Clémentine varieties…starting with Bruno, Oro grande, Sidi Aïssa, Nules, Larrache, Nour, then a proprietary selection of Nour called KSN – Kabbage Souss Nour, then Afourer, also called Nadorcott.

They had been harvesting for almost two weeks, and had just finished harvest of Bruno, their first variety. They were on the second picking of Oro Grande. They export most of them, so they pick fruits with some yellow coloration, but they mostly look green to me, definitely not tree ripe. Also, they don’t color up as well as ours because it isn’t that cold.

We got the grand tour of the different varieties. Then we stopped to see the fully computerized irrigation & fertigation station. Beside it is their water storage basin…enough for 25 days…I can’t remember how many cubic meters, but a lot! It had a sign on it…No swimming! It was bigger than an Olympic pool, and I can see how one would be tempted when it's hot. They even have fish!

On the way to see the mandarin harvest, we stopped at the orange section…they grow Washington Navels, Cara Cara, and Newhall. They have a terrible problem with snails on the oranges; they are really destructive. It seems an oxymoron to have snails in the desert, but apparently the valley where the oranges are planted has harbored them for a very long time. The snails eat the rind and fruit…leaving big holes, and there can be 5 or more snails on the same fruit! Be thankful that we don’t have that issue!

Then we went to see the harvest. Many Moroccans do not like to have their picture taken, as I have mentioned before, but we found a picker who would let us take his picture, so I took a lot of pictures. It was pretty interesting. They are paid by how much they pick, so he was fast. They are using shears very similar to the little lemon clippers most of our growers use. At another farm, I saw shears that looked more like small wire cutters.

They pick into water…directly into what looks like a plastic wastebasket with holes in it, which in turn, is nested in a bigger bucket of water, with a very weak solution of 2,4 D in it. Apparently the 2,4 D holds the calyx on the fruit…if there is no calyx, it will not be acceptable at the packing house.

Then the wastebaskets are dumped into a plastic bin that holds about 38-40 pounds – about the size of some of ours. They stack the bins beside the row as they fill them…very carefully leaving an empty one on the bottom so the fruit does not touch the ground.

There are two pickers per row…one on each side of the row so they don’t have to go back and forth between the trees. The intrarow spacing is very close…about 9 feet between trees in the row, then about 15-18 feet between rows, depending on variety. They are keeping the trees low as well…no ladders to be seen in the mandarins. I saw some in the navels, though.

It is quite an operation. Trucks take huge piles of the bins to the packing shed. I see trucks on the road from Taroudannt all the time, with different colored bins for the different companies. The big companies have their own packing sheds, but some pack other fruit on contract.

I have not yet seen a citrus “Station de conditionnement” (lit. conditioning station) as they call packing houses. I visited a vegetable packing house this past Saturday with the group of Saudi lab technicians who are here for training. It was beautiful…immaculate, really nice equipment, and very efficient. At least as nice as and maybe better than some California packing sheds! I’m going to see the citrus packing shed tomorrow. More on that later.

I’ve been buying Clémentines in the various markets/supermarkets to see how they are. They are green, with some yellow orange color, attractive looking, but…so far, I am not that impressed. They are clearly being picked for shipping, and the sugars are no up yet and the flavor is not that great. What ends up in local markets are the rejects from the packing houses…smaller fruit, ones without their calyces, and ones with cosmetic flaws. I did buy some fully orange ones yesterday...figuring they had been treated with ethylene. They are a better tasting, but still not up to our standards.

Yesterday I went to the huge “First day (Sunday) market” which actually is open every day. It is an enormous market enclosed with big walls – like the old city walls in Taroudannt or Meknes. It has 21 doors, so you have to remember which door you came in to find your way back to the same spot. It was actually pretty easy to navigate because there is a huge open central area where you can identify which way you came. I didn’t go back out the same door, but it was in the general area, so I easily found a taxi. Taxis are pretty inexpensive as well…I paid about $1.25 each way.

They sell pretty much everything you could possibly want: clothes, furniture (ready made & made to order), cookware & dishes, hardware, TVs and appliances, carpets, toys, spices, fish, fruits, vegetables, etc. As well as the Moroccan crafts…leather goods, lamps and metalwork, shoes, jewelry, clothing, rugs, etc. You just have to know where to find what you want, I guess.

It was pretty wild, but really not a lot different than big city markets in West Africa or elsewhere I have been. I checked out the spice and craft sections for a while…the only thing I bought was a basket/purse to carry things in. I probably paid too much for it, but it’s not going to break the bank.

Then I went to the vegetable and fruit section. That’s where it is wild. There is one huge hall and it is jammed with people and vendors. There are two rows of cement tables down the middle, and the vendors are set up on them. So the crowd funnels through the middle to buy. After I had fought my way through the crowds and managed to buy some vegetables and fruit, I found another side section…without the cement tables and floor, but much quieter, with few people…so it was easy to buy. I spent a grand total of $5.25 for all my veggies & fruit -½ a kilogram (1.1 pound) of very fine green beans, another of sweet red peppers (about 1 pound for 35¢!!), a kilo of onions and a kilo of potatoes, half a kilo of lovely little butter pears and a kilo of Clémentines.

If you just eat fruit, vegetables, bread (about 12¢ for a small flattish loaf about 5” across), yoghurt (they make individual cups like we have and each one costs about 25¢) and eggs (about 12¢ each) - you can eat for next to nothing. Almost all the fruit is grown here…even the bananas, so it’s pretty cheap. The pears were the most expensive at $3 a kilo ($1.50 a pound) as they come from Meknes, which is quite a ways away. Even adding taxi fare into the cost of my fruits and veggies, it was still cheap!

It’s the imported stuff that costs a fortune…I bought a chocolate bar in a grocery store last week. It wasn’t priced (most supermarkets either label the items with the price or it’s on the shelves like ours.) It wasn’t until I got home and looked at the sales slip that I realized I had paid $4 for it! Expensive treat…but probably worth it occasionally! :)