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Blame it on the grain
By Hawkar Jalal Ahmed-SLEMANI
SOMA Paper No.34 Monday, November 24, 2008

The price of grain paid by the government may be suitable but hardly sufficient to cover the farmers’ expenses.

The Kurdistan region has a wide range of agricultural lands, which are yearly planted by farmers with many kinds of agricultural products, crops, vegetables, fruit and many other products used for animal feeding. However, the agricultural products do not meet the demands of the population of the Kurdish region especially the winter crops like wheat and barley, which are the most economic crops that have a great effect on the economy of the country.

In the Kurdistan region, harvesting starts roughly around 25 April and another around 17 May or 20 June, depending on the weather, rainfall and topography of these areas. Determining the right harvest time is very important in order to obtain a good result of quantity and quality. There is a small number of farmers who work on their fields. Many have gone off to work as government employees in the big cities. Naturally, this depletes the size of the human labor needed to complete the farm, resulting in decreasing farm yields.

Sasan Abdul Ghani Mohamed, who has 15 years experience in agriculture crops marketing, said that on 17 May the KRG Ministry of Agriculture started a campaign to collect information about the amount of yield per unit area, the cost of the agricultural activities like seeds, pest and weed control, human labor, machines, from planting until harvesting and collecting the product, surveying all the villages around the city counting the number of farmers. This objective is to provide the ministry departments with an accurate view of agriculture in those villages of the future agricultural policy and to depend on pricing for marketing these crops.

“We continually visit the farms, providing them with new information about agriculture and how to protect their crops from the diseases and insects in order to produce clean grains to get a high value price for marketing,” Sasan said.

Women are hired to clean the winter crops, while others use seed cleaning machines, he added. The KRG ministry of agriculture has seven seed cleaning machines working for cleaning the wheat and barley owned by the farmer, with a cost of 5,000 Dinars per hour and another 18 clearance provided to work by the ARDI organization in coordination with the Youth Activities Organization for 7,500 Dinars per hour, which started to work in the areas of Qaradagh, Bingrd, Barzninja, Bazeyan, Bakrajo, Said Sadeq, Khurmal, Khalakan, Pshdar, Sharazur, Sangasar, Ashte, Taqtaq, Kifri, Sangaw, and Aghjalar.

In the past, the KRG has not been able to allocate a special budget to buy the farmers’ products. In 2003, the KRG planned to buy the products aiming to better serve the farmers and encourage them to plant their fields and increase their yields. Among such efforts, the General Directorate of Trade, Directorate of Grain Marketing which is located inside the Slemani Silo area, began to buy farmers’ grains on 1 June, 2006.

After taking 250 gm as a sample from a farmer’s grain, and testing it, the product will be given three different marks (grades) depending on the clearance and the rate of containing some limited ratio of rocks, weeds, smut, rust, broken kernel, and materials other than the grain. If the ratio of the mentioned materials reaches 6 percent, the grain will be refused. The wheat product with the best quality will be sent to government mills to make flour. The wheat product which comes second will be sent to special locations to be cleaned. The third degree will be used as forage.

The ratio of total grain bought from the farmers varies from one year to another depending on the rainfall as well as the farmers’ own consumption, and as a certified seed to plant for the following years farming, as forage for animals and chickens. The other will be sent to the local markets or to the government. Nouri Fatah Hama Faraj, 52, has 30 donims of land planted with winter crops in the village of De Rashka in the Sharazur area. Nouri said that he started harvesting his crops from 15 June using combines, as his products level rises to 750-800 tons per donim.

“The price which was given by the government is suitable, but cannot reach the farmers demand to cover the cost of planting the crops or tractor and combine costs, it still needs improvement,” he added. Asked about the farmers problems and demand, Nouri said that the most important problem is that there is one center in the city of Slemani to buy our crops, “we really need new centers opened near our villages to facilitate sending our crops with little transport cost.”

As the result of the centers being far from our fields some of our farmers may prefer to sell their crops to somebody trading with grains for a lower price than that given by the government to reduce the total costs.