Omar Qadir, 70, is the oldest farmer from the village of Kareza Dalo in Sulaimani’s Chamchamal district. He was unable to harvest any of his 65 dunams of barley and wheat due to the heavy hailstorms which destroyed all his produce.
"[The crop] was of very good quality, but they all went to waste. The hailstorm destroyed all the wheat and barley. It was not meant to be from God. The produce was all destroyed. This is it," Qadir said.
From inside the farmland, Mustafa Hama Salih, a friend of Qadir, described what the hailstorm has done to his his friends’ farmland.
"This is barely. This is Mr. Omer's cropland. Look how destroyed it is. Only the bush is left. The barley has all fallen to the ground. Look, they are mixed with the soil. Look, what has happened to it. This was God's will," Salih said.
Hundreds of dunams of farmlands planted with wheat and barely across ten villages of Sangaw subdistrict have been destroyed due to the bad weather.
"Some farmers have lost all their produce. This farmland's owner had planted five to six tons of wheat here. He had plowed the land three times, spending ten to 11 million dinars, despite all the hard work and other things they had done. Look, they have nothing left behind to harvest," said Azad Hussein, another farmer.
A committee from the Chamchamal agriculture department visited Sangaw to assess the damage caused by recent weather conditions.
"Look at all of these [croplands]. They are too useless to harvest. They cannot be harvested at all. The hailstorm has destroyed all produce. They have fallen to the grounds and only the bushes are left," said Sardar Hassan, a member of the committee.
"Due to the economic crisis, we from the Kurdistan Regional Government, had not been able to compensate them in the past. However, we have openly discussed this matter with Iraq, in the presence of the prime minister of Iraq that similar to farmers from the central and southern provinces of Iraq, the Kurdistan Region farmers too will have to be supported and compensated," Begard Talabani, the Kurdistan Region’s agriculture minister, told Rudaw on the sidelines of a conference in Erbil earlier this week.
The Kurdistan Region has received almost twice as much rainfall this year as last year, the Kurdistan Region’s meteorology department announced on Sunday.
A rainy winter season has caused numerous large floods that have led to several deaths and destroyed many houses across the Kurdistan Region.
Heavy downpours and flash floods have become increasingly common in recent years.
Four hikers were swept away by floodwaters in Sulaimani province’s Qaradagh town earlier this month. None of them survived. One of the dead had recently overcome cancer. Police arrested the guide of the 12-member hiking group.
A 25-year-old pregnant woman was killed in Erbil province’s Kore subdistrict in early May after flooding caused a wall to collapse on her as she was rushing to safety. Three other women were severely injured in the incident.
Three people were killed in flooding in Duhok province in March.
The Kurdistan Region’s authorities have issued several warnings about the stormy weather and have forecast more rain for the next several days.
