ERBIL, Kurdistan Region - This year's cold weather and lack of rain has caused significant damage to wheat farmers, causing millions of dinars in losses.
“I applied fertilizers, but the cold weather arrived and the crops turned yellow,” Mahmoud Abdullah, a farmer from Garmiyan, told Rudaw on Wednesday. Last year, his fields yielded 40 tons of wheat, but he expects no harvest this year, resulting in a loss of 10 million dinars.
A late blast of winter cold at the end of February brought low temperatures to much of the Kurdistan Region.
Another farmer, Zeravan Majid from Duhok, said he has lost about 150 million dinars.
“I spent around 150 million dinars on wheat, chemicals, excluding tractor costs,” Majid told Rudaw.
It has also been a dry year. So far, 215 mm of rain has fallen, a sharp decline from the 980 mm of rain last year. The 78 percent decrease in precipitation has had a big impact on the crops, according to Muslih Hassan, deputy director of agriculture in Duhok.
According to the directorate, 700,000 dunams of wheat were cultivated in Duhok this year. Of this, 40 percent was affected by the lack of rainfall.
Authorities in Duhok province have permitted farmers to dig wells and construct artificial ponds to try and save their crops.
According to the United Nations, Iraq is among the nations most vulnerable to the effects of climate change, including water and food insecurity, facing a severe water shortage because of reduced precipitation, higher temperatures, and mismanagement.
The World Resources Institute places Iraq among 25 countries that face extreme water stress, meaning that it is using over 80 percent of its available supply of water and is at risk of running out of water in case of any short-term drought.
