Tunisian farmers cash in on miracle prickly pear crop

Rows of sprawling cacti fill a valley in central Tunisia, where producers are hoping the spiky fruit can fuel a cosmetics cash-in.

“This is the capital of the Barbary fig,” said Mohamed Rochdi Bannani, one of the North African country’s first producers of cosmetic oil from the seeds of the fruit — better known as the prickly pear.

He is hoping the oil, with its rich antioxidant properties and a price tag of some €350 euros  a litre, can bring wealth to the marginalised province of Kasserine.

“This fruit has changed my life and the life of the region. It’s created wealth in the district, even though the fruit used to be a symbol of poverty,” the 52-year-old said.

The prickly pear tree also used to grow extensively in Malta for centuries, and even featured on the country’s Coat of Arms)

Used in moisturising and anti-ageing products, it is a much-needed cash cow in a region where one third of people live in poverty and unemployment runs at 20 percent.

Some 30,000 hectares of land are dedicated to the crop in Zelfen, close to the border with Algeria.

Around a tenth of that is organic-certified.

The industry employs some 5,000 people, says Boubaker Raddaoui of the United Nations-backed Market Access Project for Agrifood and Local Products (PAMPAT).

“This oil has become a catalyst for an inclusive local economy,” he said, praising the cactus for its “ability to adapt and produce in difficult conditions, as well as its industrial potential”.

“It’s really a miracle plant,” he said.

Rapid growth

Tunisia ranks fifth in the world in terms of land devoted to prickly pear production, behind Brazil, Mexico, Ethiopia and Morocco.

While some of the 550,000 tonnes of fruit it produces every year are sold in markets and from street carts known as “hindi”, most goes to oil.

Some 8,000 litres were exported in 2021, bringing in five million euros (dollars) in revenue, according to PAMPAT.

The organisation has been helping farmers with training and business advice since 2013, and has seen rapid growth in the sector, Raddaoui said.

“Exports jumped by 50 percent between 2019 and 2021,” he told AFP.

“This shows the attractiveness of the sector and the increase in demand from one year to the next.”

Since the start of the millennium, the country has gone from having five processing plants to 55.

Zelfen alone has 11, run by cooperatives.

“Before, everyone just wanted to emigrate, but today that’s ancient history — thanks to the oil,” said Hamza Rochdi, a young farmer with 40 hectares of land.

Hanane Messaoudi, who harvests the fruit for the minimum wage of just $125 a month, says demand for the fruit has improved her working conditions.

Yet the high price of its oil is not the prickly pear’s only asset.

In a dry country where access to water is already far below the 1,700 cubic metres per resident per year the United Nations defines as “water stressed”, the drought-tolerant cactus is a safer bet compared with thirstier crops.

“The prickly pear is undemanding, adapts to lots of soil types and doesn’t use much water,” Raddaoui said.

The success of the crop in Zelfen has prompted farmers in other regions such as Nabeul and Kairouan to take an interest.

But there is only so much demand for the product, and Bannani says “marketing problems” mean he only processes around a fifth of his harvest — some 20,000 tonnes of fruit — for oil.