## 5 Discussion
Contrary to Morocco, another study conducted on the vulnerability of Uganda's maize production noted that the vulnerability of maize yield was higher in the north the country than in the south. Similar observations were made for adaptive capacity, which showed higher trends in the south and lower trends in the north of Uganda [20]. Furthermore, following the distribution of annual precipitation across Morocco's major regions for the period 1970-2001, it was observed that normalized rainfall increased northwards, from 30 mm in Dakhla (South) to 700 mm in Tangier (North) [22]. In sub-Saharan Africa (Uganda, Cameroon, etc.) the reverse has been observed, with declining precipitation with every northward move due to climate, soil, and other socio-economic factors. In Morocco, the so-called favorable zones, and intermediate zones--where the amount of precipitation ranges from 350 mm to 450 mm--account for an average of 38% of the sown area of cereals, with a predominance of soft and durum wheat. Agricultural practices in these areas are aimed at intensification, which makes it possible to produce nearly 60% of cereal production (average 1998-2003). The areas considered unfavorable contribute a little over 40% of the cereal area, which is mainly sown with barley in a traditional cultivation system characterized by minimal use of selected seeds, fertilizers, and pesticides. Production in these areas is about 30% of the country's total production of cereal crops. The remaining areas are in the mountains and the Sahara, which account for 10% of the annual cereal production [78]. The increase in common wheat production is essentially due to the extension of areas stimulated by the intensification policies implemented since the early 1980s. An intensification program was set up by the Ministry of Agriculture in 1985, aimed at planting one million hectares. The expansion of the surface area seems to be mainly at the expense of barley, which is increasingly grown in marginal areas with low agronomic potential [78], paired with the population's lower potential for identifying alternative solutions to climatic limitations in these locations, owing to poverty and restricted access to information--as evidenced by poverty and literacy indicators. This explains why certain recent advances, such as peripheral agriculture areas and the growth of wheat instead of barley, are projected to enhance Morocco's agriculture sector's vulnerability to climate change [25; 69; 79]. Besides this, the vulnerability of crops to climate change is closely associated with poverty and literacy rates [80; 81]. In fact, poverty restricts access to resources by denying impoverished people access to agricultural supplies such as drought-tolerant crops with high yields, fertilizers, and irrigation infrastructure. Additionally, information dissemination is a key concern; people with lower levels of education are less likely to comprehend climate-related information and put climate-smart concepts into practice [79; 82; 83; 84; 85]. Such disparities in literacy and poverty rates are often remarkable in Africa in general and spatially in Morocco, which makes them particularly highly representative proxies of adaptive capacity [86; 87]. However, this study has provided for the first time in Morocco an all-encompassing approach by merging rainfall and socio-economic factors and introducing the three components of vulnerability, opening the door to further studies investigating other climatic and non-climatic variables such as temperature, soils, pests, and diseases affecting crops, high-yielding varieties, and fertilizers to assess the vulnerability of cereal crops in Morocco.