Agriculture is ailing in
Kurdistan
By Mohammed A. Salih
The Kurdish Globe Wednesday, 04
July 2007
http://www.kurdishglobe.net/displayArticle.jsp?id=B1EF7945C3D6AC2A042753B6F07EB417
Kurdish men are loading a truck with fruit boxes in Erbil's main fruit market. The bulk of agricultural products consumed in Kurdistan are imported, something that has raised alarms for local agricultural sector. GLOBE PHOTO/Wahid Ismaeel
Agriculture in Kurdistan Region
remains crippled, turning the region
into a "consumer market for foreign
agricultural and food products."
Erbil- Mutasam Ahmad, 53, sells
different kinds of fruits and
vegetables in his small grocery,
many of them products of neighboring
countries. Ahmad, originally from a
farming family who for generations
tilled Erbil's fertile Qaraj area,
does not earn that much from his new
job. Still, he says, it is better
than living in a village. He left
his village in the Qaraj area in the
late 1980s and permanently settled
in Erbil.
"You work very hard on your farm for
one year, but at the end the crop is
not at all encouraging and sometimes
even you may lose money," he says.
"But here I can somehow rely on my
revenues from this small shop and
earn my family a living."
He and his three brothers have not
cultivated their ancestral land for
years now, and "are not going to do
so as long as the situation goes on
like this."
Ahmad's new lifestyle is typical of
tens of thousands of villagers who
have abandoned their villages and
moved to cities. Many of these
families were forced to evacuate
their villages during the notorious
Anfal operations carried out by the
former regime of Saddam Hussein.
Kurds estimate that around 4,000
villages were razed during the Anfal
Campaign; orchards were burned,
water wells cemented, cattle killed,
and vast areas of land were
deforested. This was all part of a
"scorched earth" policy in an
alleged campaign of genocide and
counter-insurgency operations.
A man is examining imported fruits at a major local fruit market in Erbil. GLOBE PHOTO/Wahid Ismael
Another wave of immigration from
villages to cities started after
1991 when Kurds were suffering from
double sanctions from the United
Nations and Saddam's government.
During the UN-sponsored oil-for-food
program, many more villagers left
for cities, dealing the last blow to
agriculture in Kurdistan Region.
Under the oil-for-food program, the
Iraqi government was importing food
items from abroad, crippling the
agriculture sector here.
Since then, Kurdistan, which was
once Iraq' food basket, has turned
into a consumer market for foreign
agricultural and food products.
Fertile plains, plentiful water
resources, vast razes, and a
favorable climate have all made
Kurdistan an ideal place for various
forms of agriculture. However, at
least over the last decade, little
use has been made of this.
Statistics from Kurdistan Ministry
of Agriculture (MA) show that
agricultural production rates have
been very unsteady. For instance, in
the year 1987-1988, when Anfal was
at its peak, farmers in Erbil
province produced 76,958 tons of
wheat, the main agricultural product
in Kurdistan. That number increased
to around 280,000 tons in 2002-2003,
while it again plummeted to
approximately 134,000 tons in
2005-2006.
"The situation that we are now
living in is an alert bell," Sherzad
Omar, dean of Salahaddin
University's College of Agriculture
in Erbil, told The Globe.
"Generally, agriculture is in very
bad shape in Kurdistan now."
Omar warned that food
security in the region is
under threat and urged the
government to take immediate
and concrete steps to
address this issue.
"If you have food security,
which can be basically
achieved through
self-sufficiency, then you
guarantee a vital part of
your national security," he
said in reference to the
"urgent need" to revive
Kurdish agriculture.
Omar blamed UN's Food and
Agriculture Organization (FAO)
for inflicting "a big blow"
on the Kurdish agricultural
sector through their
"unscientific method" and
"lack of a strategic plan."
FAO was one of several UN
agencies operating in Iraq
during international
sanctions from 1992 to 2003.
Kurdistan markets are now
full of fruits, vegetables,
and various food items
imported from southern areas
of the country or Iraq's
neighbors.
Meanwhile, Kurdistan
Regional Government (KRG)
has lacked a strategic
approach to revive the
countryside over the past 16
years that it has been
ruling the Kurdish region.
This year, however, the MA
has started holding a series
of conferences to devise an
"agriculture strategy."
The KRG is enlisting 10,000
farmers and supplying them
with pickup trucks at
subsidized prices as part of
its plan to help them. It
has also increased tariffs
on imported agricultural
products during summer to
help internal production be
consumed in local markets.
"We are aiming in the first
phase to increase production
quantity and quality. The
second phase, aimed to be in
place within five years, is
to achieve self-sufficiency.
And the third phase is to
optimize production to a
level that Kurdistan can
become an agricultural
exporter within 10 years,"
said Anwar Omar Qadir, MA
director of planning.
Many believe the first step
in starting "an agricultural
revolution" is to restore
life to the countryside and
encourage farmers to go back
to their villages.
"The government needs to
rebuild villages, provide
agricultural machinery,
distribute good seeds, and
facilitate transporting the
products to local markets,"
Mohamed Dashti, head of
Erbil's Farmers' Union, told
The Globe.
"What a farmer earns now is
not even equal to what he
spends. They need support to
be able to stand on their
feet once again," Dashti
said.