Dramatic drop in wheat production disappoints Mosul farmers

MOSUL, Iraq - With a broken heart, Ibrahim Abdullah stood before the ruins of the fields, waiting for this year's harvest, but with pessimism. Many others in Mosul have been hardly hit by drought and climate change. 

"It is a loss," he told Rudaw on Monday. 

Abdullah, from the Hazara district south of Mosul, spent 20 million Iraqi dinars [around $15,000] on 60 dunams of land where he planted wheat. Based on this year's harvest, he will earn only one million dinars, losing 19 million. 

He blamed the loss on a lack of rainfall and the drying of wells.

Abdullah is married, and his family's livelihood depends solely on farming. But due to the drought and climate change, each dunam of land yields less than half a ton.

He said last year’s yield was better. 

According to data from the meteorological and seismological department, less than 100 millimeters of rain fell in Nineveh this year, which is why wheat production decreased significantly. At the same time, the quality of wheat has declined.

"There is a significant difference between last year and this year. The harvest is 10-15 percent less compared to last year because last year we had rain in spring. Last year, nearly four million dunams of rain-fed and irrigated land were planted, but this year only 283,000 dunams were within the plan and 59 dunams were outside the plan," Amir Omar al-Hamoudi, director of planning at the Nineveh agriculture directorate, told Rudaw. 

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