The Cattle Show

When we went up to the dam we noticed some enormous buildings being built to the north of the town. We could not understand what it was, steel frameworks for hangar-like buildings on a monster scale.  Then when we got back from the Draa there were signs on the lamposts all round the town.

 As they were trilingual, Arabic, Berber and French and French was the 3rd language buried in the middle we never were able to read them properly. (The arabic lessons are not progressing well).
It was publicity for a trade fair on cattle farming.
We went on the last day.  The scale was almost up to the Royal Welch but cattle only. I couldn't tell if the cattle had been judged competitively but I think not. There were no rosettes and they didn't look quite groomed enough. The show was free and clearly set up to encourage the development of the industry, but it was very popular. The impression was that perhaps the major business had already been done with the VIPs early in the show but there was a stream of visitors.

The cattle displayed were overwhelmingly Holsteins.

 There were a few Charlerois

and another similar French breed, but the animal attracting most interest and crowds 4 deep to see was the Aberdeen Angus bull.

There were no Fresians, Jerseys, Guernseys or Herefords; a french selection.
There was a hall of trade stands and an outdoor display of major league equipment.

 This was all high capital investment, industrial scale farming, although one stand did have alongside the mega-equipment some of those old-fashioned milk churns you used to have in the days when the milk lorry came daily. I got the impression they were encouraging those 700-1000+ indoor farms where the cows decide when to be milked and they are fed silage all year. I found that rather confusing as one always thinks that Morocco's strengths are in labout intensive industry.
Many of the firms exhibiting are obviously multi-national but the general representaion seemd French and I was disappointed not to see more British firms, indeed there did not seem to be many Dutch or German either and, accepting in was a Francophone / Arabic exhibition it seems a bit of a lost opportunity if the state/King is encouraging a major growth in Cattle farming.