If you drive between Marrakech and Essaouira, at some point the landscape shifts into something unusual. The trees get thornier, more twisted, and if you look closely enough you will notice goats standing in the branches, sometimes four or five meters off the ground, completely unbothered. These are argan trees, and the goats are eating the fruit. What the goats leave behind, or pass through them, is what starts the process of making one of the most sought-after oils in the world.
Argan oil has become a global beauty and culinary product worth hundreds of millions of dollars annually. You can find it in high-end cosmetics in Paris, in gourmet food shops in New York, in hair salons in Tokyo. What is less visible from the outside is who actually makes it, and what their lives look like.
The Argan Tree and Why It Only Grows Here
The argan tree, Argania spinosa, grows almost exclusively in a specific region of southwestern Morocco between Agadir, Essaouira, and Taroudant, a UNESCO-designated Biosphere Reserve covering roughly 2.5 million hectares. It grows nowhere else on earth in meaningful quantities, which makes argan oil genuinely rare in a way that most products marketed as rare are not.
The trees are ancient and slow. An argan tree can live for up to 200 years and takes decades to reach full productivity. They are drought-resistant and deep-rooted, holding the soil together in a region that would otherwise be at serious risk of desertification. The tree is not just economically important. It is ecologically critical. The Moroccan government has placed strict protections on the argan forest, and international organizations have invested significantly in its preservation.
The fruit of the argan tree looks like a small olive, yellow-green when ripe. Inside the fruit is a hard nut, and inside the nut are one to three small kernels. Those kernels are what get pressed to produce the oil. Getting to them is the time-consuming part, and for centuries it has been done almost entirely by hand.
What the Cooperatives Actually Are
The women-run argan oil cooperatives of southwestern Morocco began forming in the 1990s and early 2000s, largely with support from international development organizations and the Moroccan government, as a way of formalizing and protecting an income source that rural Berber women had always had but rarely controlled.
Before the cooperatives, most argan oil production happened informally within households. Women did the work but the income was rarely theirs to manage directly. The cooperative model changed that. By pooling labor and resources, the women could produce argan oil at a scale that allowed them to sell to larger buyers, receive fair prices, access training, and in some cases send their children to school with the earnings.
There are now over 150 argan oil cooperatives in Morocco, employing tens of thousands of women. The most established ones, particularly along the Marrakech to Essaouira road, have become significant employers in their communities and important stops on the Morocco travel circuit. A visit to one of these cooperatives is a genuinely different experience from most tourist attractions in Morocco, because what you are watching is not a performance. It is work.
The Process: Slower Than You Think
Most visitors to an argan oil cooperative arrive expecting something mechanized, a factory tour with clean machines and branded packaging. What they find instead is a room of women sitting on the floor, cracking argan nuts by hand between two stones, the same way it has been done for generations.
The outer fruit is first removed and dried, often fed to goats or used as fuel. The hard inner nut is then cracked open using a stone to extract the kernels. This is the most labor-intensive part of the process and cannot bemeaningfully mechanized without damaging the kernel. An experienced woman can crack roughly a kilogram of kernels in an hour of steady work. To produce a single liter of argan oil requires roughly thirty kilograms of fruit and many hours of cracking.
For culinary argan oil the kernels are lightly roasted before pressing, which gives the oil its distinctive nutty flavor. For cosmetic argan oil the kernels are pressed raw. The pressing itself, in most cooperatives, is still done using traditional stone mills, though some cooperatives now use modern cold-press equipment alongside the traditional methods.
The result is an oil with a golden color and a rich, slightly nutty smell. Tasting it fresh, drizzled over amlou, a thick paste made from ground almonds, argan oil, and honey, is one of those simple food experiences that stays with you long after you leave Morocco.
What It Means for the Women Who Work There
The cooperatives are not charities. The women who work in them are skilled workers producing a high-value product, and they know it. What the cooperative model gives them is negotiating power and financial independence that rural women in Morocco have historically had limited access to.
Fatima, a member of a cooperative near Essaouira who has been cracking argan nuts since she was a teenager learning from her mother, described it this way to a journalist some years ago: before the cooperative, I worked just as hard but the money went elsewhere. Now I know what I earn and I decide what it is used for.
That sense of agency matters beyond the economic. Several cooperatives have used their collective income to fund adult literacy classes for their members, healthcare access, and school fees for children in the community. The argan oil cooperative in Morocco is one of the more successful examples in the region of a women-led economic model that creates change at the community level without requiring anyone to leave their home or abandon their way of life.
The Tourism Side: What to Expect on a Visit
Stopping at an argan oil cooperative on the road between Marrakech and Essaouira is included in several Navigate Morocco tours, and for good reason. It takes about forty-five minutes and it changes the way you think about the bottle of argan oil you might pick up at an airport duty-free on the way home.
You will see the cracking, the pressing, and the bottling. You will be offered samples of culinary oil and amlou. You will have the chance to buy directly from the cooperative at a fair price, with the knowledge that the money goes to the women who made it rather than to a middleman or a mass-market brand.
A word of caution worth sharing: not every roadside shop calling itself a cooperative actually is one. The success of the argan oil industry has attracted commercial operators who use the cooperative branding without the structure. If you want to support the genuine article, visit a cooperative that is certified by the Fédération des Coopératives d’Argane or one recommended by a reputable local tour operator. Navigate Morocco only visits verified cooperatives as part of our tours.
A word of caution worth sharing: not every roadside shop calling itself a cooperative actually is one. The success of the argan oil industry has attracted commercial operators who use the cooperative branding without the structure. If you want to support the genuine article, visit a cooperative that is certified by the Fédération des Coopératives d’Argane or one recommended by a reputable local tour operator. Navigate Morocco only visits verified cooperatives as part of our tours.
Want to Visit an Argan Oil Cooperative in Morocco?
Our Marrakech to Essaouira tour includes a stop at a verified women-run argan oil cooperative along the way. You will see the full process, taste the oil fresh, and buy directly from the women who made it. Have a look at our coastal Morocco tours to find the right itinerary for you.