Phosphorus cannot be replaced in our food production system because it requires 10-15 million years to be regenerated naturally. In 2010, the IFDC World Phosphate Rock Reserves and Resources report showed that Morocco holds 85% of world reserves. Cordell & White (2015) indicated that Morocco accounts for three-quarters of the world's high-grade ones. Since 1921, the state-owned company Office Chérifien des Phosphates (OCP) has overseen those reserves on behalf of the Kingdom of Morocco. How has the OCP evolved until Morocco’s independence?
Phosphate has been a global commodity for a century, with extractive companies in diverse countries (the U.S., Russia, China, Jordan, Morocco, etc.). Over the last two centuries, the natural phosphorus cycles have interfered with industrial revolutions, including the Sanitarian Revolution and the Green Revolution (Ashley et al., 2011). Other ways to analyze the history of phosphorus and agro-chemistry have been made through the need for fertilizers, and all commodity circuits ensued (Melillo, 2012; Shiva, 1991). More recently, Simon Jackson (2016) has written about the evolution of phosphorus by relying on the layout of extraction sites in North Africa. He calls it "the phosphate archipelagos' to emphasize all the connections between different islands of extraction. Although many economists have studied phosphate markets, they still stick to alternating periods of shortage and surplus (Mensah, 2003).
Despite all those works enriching our perspectives on phosphate history, geographies, and markets, little is known about the internal evolution of phosphate companies, including OCP, and how they built their strategies beyond market prices.
Based on the archives of OCP, banks and the French colonial administration, the paper demonstrates that despite selling phosphate on global markets, OCP was mainly influenced by its national environment.