Wed, Jul 15, 2020 page5

• Pandemic boosts food self-sufficiency in Iraq

  • AFP, AFAK, Iraq
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  Unlike in years past, Iraqi farmer Ahmed Mohsen walked past his local market with a smile on his face. The pale-green melons he harvested were selling fast, thanks to the COVID-19 pandemic.

  Iraq, in a bid to prevent the spread of the novel coronavirus, in the middle of March shut its 32 border crossings to goods and people coming from Iran, Turkey, Syria, Jordan and Saudi Arabia.

  That helped the Iraqi Ministry of Agriculture accelerate a campaign to make Iraqi food markets self-sustainable, after they had spent years relying on foreign imports for half of their supply.

  

  Fruits are displayed for sale at Al-Sadriya Market in Baghdad on Friday.

  Photo: AFP

  The land fit for farming in Iraq is about 9.3 million hectares — much less than Iran’s nearly 46 million or Syria’s almost 14 million hectares.

  “For years, farmers have been working at a loss, with little support from the state,” said Mohsen, who lives in Iraq’s agricultural heartland, the southern province of Diwaniyah. “But with the new coronavirus, the authorities have begrudgingly been forced to close the border.”

  Every year, Iraq would buy US$2.8 billion in goods from regional trade giant Turkey, with Iranian imports coming in second with US$2.2 billion in products sold to Baghdad.

  It was a grim reality for a country whose ancestral civilization, Mesopotamia, has been hailed for its pioneering agricultural and irrigation technologies for thousands of years.

  The land of two rivers is now making a small comeback. Every day, Mohsen’s melons make their way from his home village of Afak to be sold en masse to the rest of the country.

  “The authorities didn’t want to help farmers, but in the end they allowed us to prove that we can provide for the nutrition needs of Iraqis,” said Mohsen, a 32-year-old farming engineer.

  One-third of Iraq’s 40 million people still rely on farming to live, but the industry is riddled with inefficiencies.

  As a holdover from the socialist era of former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein, the government provides subsidies in water, fertilizer and equipment, and purchases certain products — particularly wheat, barley and lentils — from Iraqi farmers at a price above the market rate.

  However, the state usually also imports cheap foodstuffs from Iran and Turkey at huge volume, causing an imbalance in the market, experts wrote in the Sustainability environmental magazine last year.

  Their research found that Iraqi farmers often opted not to work their land, because they did not expect to sell the harvest, given the oversupply from neighboring countries.

  Local farmers usually provide about 5 million tonnes of wheat products yearly, complemented by about 3 million tonnes imported from neighboring countries, mostly flour. Those who did sell their harvest to the government reported months-long delays in getting paid, which are still ongoing today.

  That is why the coronavirus, despite bringing death and suffering to many, is also a blessing in disguise for their sector, farmers told reporters.

  “Each year, the state is late in paying farmers and this slaps us with losses,” Khashan Karayiz said.

  He comes from a long line of wheat farmers and this year, for the first time he can remember, he has already sold all of his harvest by July.

  With little competition from Turkish or Iranian rivals, he was able to sell directly to the private sector, earning more money more quickly.

  “I hope Baghdad will stop imports, in order to financially and morally support Iraqi farmers,” Karayiz said.

  A little further on at the market, Hani Shayyer offered melons, eggplants, cucumbers and tomatoes.

  It was the first time that his produce has been able to reign supreme in local markets, he told reporters.

  With no competition, his wares — which he said “are much better quality than imports” — could be sold at lower prices.

  Already, the ministry has placed bans or new tariffs on 25 fruits and vegetables.

  Across the border, Syria and Turkey have also stopped selling their agricultural goods abroad due to the pandemic.

  That has helped Iraq become self-sufficient in 28 food products for the first time in years, said Mohammed Kachach, who heads Diwaniyah’s Farming Confederation.

  Egg production, for example, steadily grew from 11 million eggs per month in January to 17 million in April, May and last month, the ministry said.

  However, structural problems remain.

  Wheat and barley are still being smuggled in from Syria, Iran and Turkey, and then being mixed into Iraqi farmers’ harvests to pass them off as local and therefore win government subsidies, a government source said.

  The lower prices in the market do benefit consumers, but still hurt local producers, according to a report by the UN’s World Food Programme, and the Farming and Agricultural Organization.
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