Four generations of argan: the women of Berrada

In the Atlas Mountains, thirty-two women hand-press the oil that has defined their family for a century.

The argan tree is older than memory. It grows nowhere else on earth, a narrow band of dry land between the Atlas Mountains and the Atlantic coast, and it survives because the women of southern Morocco have decided, generation after generation, that it should.

A press that hasn't changed in a century

The Berrada cooperative still presses by hand. A nut is cracked open between two stones; the kernel is roasted lightly; a stone wheel turns; oil emerges, golden and faintly nutty. It is slow work. It is deliberate work. It pays better than the alternatives.

My grandmother taught my mother. My mother taught me. I will teach my daughter, but only if she wants to.

Fatima Berrada

What fair trade actually means here

Thirty-two women share the proceeds. Six of them have used their share to send daughters to university in Marrakesh. Two have built additional pressing rooms. The cooperative votes, every spring, on what to do with the surplus.