Argan trees only grow in Morocco, setting down roots in a narrow stretch of desert land between Marrakesh and Essaouira.
And while extracting oil from these hardy trees is a labor-intensive process—it takes 15 hours total to produce just one liter of Argan oil—the women farmworkers who harvest it for Casablanca Market do everything by hand. They remove the fruit from the tree’s thorny branches, carefully remove the flesh and then judiciously crack the center kernel with a stone to release the silken, nutty argan oil.