Region | Iraq
Drought destroys wheat crop and dries up rivers
It's been a year of drought and sand storms across Iraq - a dry spell that has devastated the country's crucial wheat crop and created new worries about the safety of drinking water.
- Reuters
- Published: 23:53 July 10, 2008
- Image Credit: AP
- A man sows a crop on a dry field on the outskirts of Najaf, while another contemplates the future.
Baghdad: It's been a year of drought and sand storms across Iraq - a dry spell that has devastated the country's crucial wheat crop and created new worries about the safety of drinking water.
US officials warn that Iraq will have to increase wheat imports sharply this winter to make up for the lost crop - a sobering proposition with world food prices high and some internal refugees already struggling to afford food.
"Planting ... is totally destroyed," said Daham Mohammad Salim, 40, who farms 120 acres in Al Jazeera area near Tikrit, 128km north of Baghdad. "Even the ground water in wells is lower than before."
Dry canals
The Tikrit area, where Saddam Hussain was born, normally is flush with green meadows in the spring and early summer but this year has only thistles, said 30-year-old farmer Ziyad Sano. He's resorted to collecting bread scraps from homes to feed his 70 sheep, but about 20 have died.
The dry weather has hurt areas from Kurdistan's wheat fields in northern Iraq to pomegranate orchards, orange groves and wheat fields just north of Baghdad.
In the capital, the Tigris river is at its lowest level since 2001, with reeds exposed on each bank. Some irrigation canals to the north in Diyala province, the country's most important bread basket, are bone dry.
Iraqi officials have won praise for acting to provide small-scale relief, such as aid to farmers and the digging of new wells. But the country's relatively low-tech farming, coupled with chronic electrical power shortages, have hindered broader solutions.
The power outages have prevented farmers in Diyala and other spots from drawing water from wells or pumping it from rivers to canals to flood-irrigate fields as usual.
Many worst-hit areas in Diyala also suffer continued violence between extremists and US-backed forces.
The dry spell has its roots in a winter with only 30 to 40 per cent of normal rain, both in Iraq and in Turkey, where the Tigris enters Iraq to the south.
Iraqi officials negotiated with Turkey to let more of that country's dwindling water supplies to flow south from dams, said Mahdi Thumad Al Qaisi, Iraq's Deputy Minister of Agriculture.
But some Iraqis say the government should press harder to get more water from neighbouring countries. A representative of Grand Ayatollah Ali Al Sistani, Iraq's most influential Shiite cleric, urged the government this week to sell oil at preferential prices in return for more access to water.
Iraq should have the cash next winter to buy enough wheat on the world market, but its government has struggled to use oil revenues quickly to solve problems.
Overall, Iraq's wheat and barley crop is expected to fall 51 per cent from last year, meaning the country will have to buy substantial amounts outside, said the US Department of Agriculture's Foreign Agricultural Service.
Health risks and adequate drinking water are other worries.
A recent survey by the International Organisation for Migration found some of Iraq's estimated 2.8 million internal refugees, including in Diyala and Baghdad, already have trouble finding affordable food and clean water - a situation that could now worsen.
Cholera has broken out in recent years in areas including Diyala. The disease is typically spread by contaminated water, a higher risk when rivers are stagnant and wells low.
The small Diyala river north of Baghdad, for example, is so low now that it's salty and unsafe to drink - for animals, plants or people, said Shaikh Thamir Al Dulaimi, who lives in Dulaim village in Diyala.
Salim has resorted to working as a taxi driver to feed his five children.
"I couldn't even pay my debts," he said.
"Farming has come to an end this year."
Planting ... is totally destroyed. Even the ground water in wells is lower than before."
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