Smart irrigation systems to be set up in the Kurdistan Region. Photo: Rudaw
ERBIL, Kurdistan Region - A new smart irrigation system is being tested in the Kurdistan Region for implementation, with an official telling Rudaw on Saturday that the new cabinet is working on changing the watering system.
It has been around two months since the College of Agriculture, and the Ministry of Agriculture coordinated with an American company on a farm in Grdarash, Erbil province, that has been producing four types of agricultural products through smart irrigation systems.
The procedure of the system recovers 75 percent of the water compared to drip and sprinkler irrigation.
“We do not see enough products and outputs from the huge amount of water we give to the farmers and the agriculture sector. We do not get back enough products from the amount we give to them,” Karwan Sabah Hawrami, general director of water resources in the Kurdistan Region told Rudaw’s Farhad Dolamari.
“The reason is that those irrigation systems we used before are not that modern. The new cabinet works on changing irrigation system in the region,” he added.
The smart agricultural irrigation system project has been used in the United States and 50 other countries since 2008. It costs around 4,500 US dollars per dunam to install.
Subhi Ali, a 20-year-old farmer, said two years of drought took a heavy toll on the production levels, adding that this year’s crops mainly consist of wheat, strawberries, corn, and barley.
Five rivers are the main sources of water in the Kurdistan Region. Most of them flow into the Kurdistan Region from Iran and Turkey.
According to the Ministry of Agriculture, around 5 billion cubic meters of water is used annually in the agricultural sector and groundwater levels have decreased by 70 percent in two years.
The Ministry of Agriculture is expected to decide on the implementation of the project after all the tests of the smart irrigation system are completed.
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