Bumper Wheat Crop in Kurdistan, But Nowhere to Store It All
Kurdistan has produced a bumper crop of wheat this year, enough for local demand. The problem is, there is no place to store it all.
Faruq Ali, director of grain products at the Kurdish ministry of agriculture, said that farmers in Kurdistan expected a boom crop of 600,000 tons.
“The Kurdistan Region needs 500 to 600,000 tons of wheat each year. Therefore, if a good mechanism is established for storing wheat, the produced amount of wheat this year can meet local demand,” he said.
Therein lies the problem. Because of the tensions with Baghdad, the overflow of wheat is not going to silos in other parts of Iraq. In Kurdistan itself, there are not enough silos to store the whole crop.
Swar Aziz, a director at the ministry of trade and industry, explained that: “Kurdistan silos can store up to 285,000 tons, but this year we have received around 500,000 tons of wheat.”
He said that the overflow of wheat was currently being piled up outside the silos, and that a solution was being sought from the Kurdish High Economic Council.
“We have requested allocation of a special budget so that we can rent storage spaces in the three provinces of the Kurdistan region. We have also suggested distributing flour quotas for several months to citizens all at once,” he said.
Silos in Kurdistan began receiving wheat crops from farmers in the beginning of last month, a process due to continue until the end of next month.
According to figures seen by Rudaw, by July 9, 492, 200,000 tons of wheat had been received from farmers and stored in Kurdistan silos. The Erbil silo has received 197,100 tons, the largest in Kurdistan.
The process of receiving wheat from farmers and the price of wheat are set by Baghdad. But due to the tensions, Kurdish farmers and officials fear Baghdad might refuse or delay payments for wheat going to feed Kurdistan.
The tensions also have meant that the normal practice of storing the overflow of Kurdish wheat in silos in other parts of Iraq is not happening this year, and no ministerial solution has been proposed.
Talib Murad, advisor to the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) for agriculture and food security, criticized Kurdish authorities for being so centered on oil that they forgot food security.
“I have prepared several reports advocating the enhancement of silo and wheat production, but because of oil no one is concerned with agriculture and food security,” he said.
Talib claimed that with scientific methods applied to agriculture, Kurdistan could drop its dependence on food imports.
“Unless the authorities believe that food security is as important as oil, the situation of agriculture and its products will remain the same,” he said.
http://rudaw.net/english/kurdistan/31072014rudaw
