Amy in Morocco: Day 13: Casablanca Wholesale Market Visit

Wednesday was another one of those amazing experiences day.   It started very early because we needed to get up at 4 am in order to leave for Casablanca so that we would be there for the early morning wholesale market activity.   We were told that these markets open as early as 5 or 6am so that buyers, restaurants, hotels, etc. can buy their fruits and vegetables early in the morning so that they had them fresh to sell or use during the day.

There was some very interesting background in getting this visit scheduled with the Casablanca wholesale market.   The Ministry of Agriculture put in the formal request for our visit in the middle of last week. We were told on Tuesday that the actual approval had to go as a high as a direct representative to the King. Wow.

We were greeted by officials and security personnel when we arrived. They were very nice and told us that we had permission to take pictures.   As an introduction, they also told us that the Casablanca wholesale market has 25,000 - 30,000 people come through it every day - primarily in the morning.   Once I saw it in action, I believed it was that large.

We started our day in the vegetable and fruit section of the market.   We were told beforehand that the inside of the warehouse is divided into 20 individual smaller markets or 'squares' where farmers can come to sell their goods to buyers.   We were able to talk to small farmers, large farmers, commercial farmers, administrators, square owners, tax collectors, and enumerators.   Enumerators are Ministory of Agriculture personnel who walk around the market each day to talk to both buyers and seller to ask daily prices so that they can capture these averages.   This is the same information that gets published online later in the day. This is not an easy job because of the fast pace of this marketplace and the relatively small amount of time that they have to do this each day.

I thought it was interesting because as we walked through this marketplace, I kept noticing that our group of security personnel kept growing larger and larger.   By the time we exited, our original group of 5 or 6 people had expanded to over 15 people.   I'm not sure why but I realized later that I was the only female that I saw in the entire building. :-)   They were very helpful and protective of our group and the marketplace was amazing to experience and see first hand.

After we left the vegetable and fruit market, we also drove to the meat market.   I'm not sure what I was expecting but we literally walked into the warehouse where the meat is slaughered, processed, inspected, and shipped.... all very quickly. I will spare you the details and pictures (although I added one that Rahul took with his camera) but it was certainly an experience and something I had never seen before.   It was a little unsettling to see so much raw meat in one place and I later decided to eat salad only for dinner. :-)

Dinner was great though.   We had two special guests from IBM who joined us.   Celia Moore, Director of Corporate Citizenship and Affairs and lives in London was in Morocco preparing for a future CSC trip. We were also joined by Nabil Baddou who runs the Public Sector practice for Morocco.   We had a great conversation about our project during dinner and Nabil will be hopefully joining us at the Ministry next week.

Walking in to the Casablance fruit and vegetable wholesale market. We were greeted by administrators and security personnel.

This was my first view and picture as I walked through the door. A picture is worth a 1000 words...

I had never seen so many wonderful, fresh fruits and vegetables in one place.

This was one of my favorite pictures of a farmer at the wholesale market with his potatoes. To me, this man symbolizes the exact type of small farmer that our project is trying to help.