Classroom lesson 路 Argan oil (and the goats that climb trees)馃嚥馃嚘 Morocco

Argan oil (and the goats that climb trees)

Goats balance on branches to eat the fruit of Morocco's most special tree

A spiky argan tree standing in the dry rocky landscape of south-west Morocco

Photo 路 Wikimedia Commons

What is it?

The argan tree grows in only one place on Earth - south-west Morocco. It produces a small fruit with a very tough nut inside. The oil pressed from the nut is one of the most valuable cooking oils in the world. And the local goats love the fruit so much that they climb up into the branches to eat it.

Tell me more

Argan trees are spiky, twisted and tough. They can live for 200 years and survive in dry, rocky land where most trees can't. From a distance, their branches look strange and a bit prickly - the perfect climbing frame for a goat.

Yes - real goats really do climb argan trees. Six or seven of them at a time, balancing on branches several metres above the ground, eating the fruit. The goats can climb the trees because their hooves grip well and their bodies are light. Photos of them look unreal, but they are absolutely true.

Argan oil is made by hand. The fruit is dried in the sun. The hard nuts are cracked open between two stones. The kernels inside are ground into a paste, then pressed to release a golden oil. It can take more than a day of work to make a single bottle.

Most argan oil is made by women working together in cooperatives. The work is shared, the profits are shared, and the cooperatives have helped many Amazigh women in the region earn their own money and send their children to school. The oil is now exported all over the world - for cooking, but also as a hair and skin treatment.

In the classroom

Walk your class through this in 15 minutes.

Talk together

Discussion prompts

  1. 01Why might goats want to climb a tree when most goats stay on the ground?
  2. 02It takes a day to make one bottle of oil. How does that change what it should cost?
  3. 03Why might a group of women working together do better than working alone?
Try this

Classroom activity

Look up videos of goats in argan trees as a class. Then each pupil designs their own tree-climbing animal. What hooves or claws would it need? What fruit would it climb for? Draw it on the right kind of tree.