Iraq achieves self-sufficiency in 14 agricultural crops.
Iraq achieves self-sufficiency in 14 agricultural crops.
2025/07/17
In a move that reflects significant progress in the agricultural sector’s performance and the achievement of national food security, the Ministry of Agriculture announced that the country has achieved self-sufficiency in 14 major crops, with the surplus being exported abroad, particularly to Gulf markets.
The Ministry’s Administrative Undersecretary, Dr. Mahdi Sahar Al-Jubouri, told Al-Sabah that the country has achieved self-sufficiency in 14 major crops, the most important of which is the strategic wheat crop for the third consecutive year, in addition to 13 other basic vegetable and fruit crops, most notably potatoes, dates, tomatoes, eggplant, cucumbers, watermelons, and watermelons. He confirmed that the surplus will be exported to the markets of the Gulf states.
He explained that the sector’s encouraging results were the result of his ministry’s ambitious programs and plans, the most important of which was the development by the Agricultural Research Department of a number of varieties of various crops, including wheat, barley, yellow corn, and soybeans, as well as drought- and salinity-tolerant varieties.
Al-Jubouri continued that its achievements in this regard also included preparing and developing yellow corn seeds locally for planting in the spring and harvesting them in the summer season during water scarcity, in addition to continuing to distribute modern irrigation systems subsidized to farmers at a rate of 30 percent, with payment on credit for a period of ten years. He stressed his ministry’s efforts to expand the adoption of specialized research and studies over the past period, which he revealed have contributed since 2003 to increasing the success rates of agricultural projects, especially promising ones, and in accordance with the latest studies and research applied in the world and in a way that meets the growing need to develop the agricultural sector successively during the future period.
In the same context, the Administrative Undersecretary noted his ministry’s adoption of the agricultural calendar program, which is the basis for establishing a balance between supply and demand for all types of agricultural crops, in order to maintain stable prices in local markets that are acceptable to both farmers, peasants, and consumers.
He explained that the policy pursued by the Ministry since 2003 focuses on increasing agricultural production in terms of quantity and quality, giving priority to grain production and providing technologies that the private sector does not possess, in addition to devising strategic programs to increase the production of one dunum in terms of quantity and quality, by adopting specialized scientific studies and research from solid sources that Iraq was deprived of throughout the years prior to 2003, and by employing the efforts of other ministries supporting the work of his Ministry during the current and future periods.
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