No harvest is enough for their strength
Farmers in northern Iraq abandon their land due to drought
General view of waste land at Sweta Dam located 20 km north of Dohuk city.
AFP
A farmer examines dry soil that does not receive irrigation water and does not receive rain due to climate change.
AFP
An agricultural tractor plowing a plot of land north of Mosul.
AFP
An aerial view of dry and cracked soil due to lack of rain and water shortages behind Zawita Dam.
AFP
An agricultural tractor is plowing a plot of land in a suburb of Tel Kaif, north of Mosul, in the Nineveh Governorate, which has been called the “bread basket of Iraq” for several centuries.
AFP
A farmer works on his land in the town of Telkef.
AFP
Cultivating the land has become a gamble in Nineveh.
AFP
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The farmer, Khamis Abbas, closed the doors of his house, left his land in Nineveh, northern Iraq, and headed to the city of Mosul, where he is suffering from unemployment, because this year’s scarce rains did not sprout wheat seeds in his field, as is the case of many farmers of that historically fertile land, who suffer due to drought caused by climate change.
Khamis, 42, moved from a village west of Mosul to live with his family in a popular neighborhood in the city of Mosul.
He tells AFP from one of the city's cafés, dressed in traditional Arab clothes, that "the cultivation of wheat and barley is now like a lottery game", as it "depends on rain, which, if available, will reap the fruits of the land."
The drought this year was severe and severe to an unprecedented extent for the farmers of Nineveh, which is the breadbasket of Iraq, as it includes vast agricultural areas amounting to six million acres, and agriculture depends on rainwater.
And if the crisis affected Iraq as a whole, this governorate, famous for its wheat cultivation, was "the most affected", according to the spokesman for the Ministry of Agriculture, Hamid Al-Nayef.
In 2020, the governorate produced 927,000 tons of wheat, achieving self-sufficiency, according to the director of the General Grain Company in Nineveh, Abdul Wahab Al-Jarjari, but in 2021, the quantity decreased to 89,000 tons due to drought and lack of rainfall.
A spokesman for the Ministry of Agriculture added that Iraq needs 4.5 million tons of wheat, "but we only produced two million."
Samah Hadid of the Norwegian Refugee Council, a non-governmental organization, explains that with the “record drop in rainfall and the decline in water flow” from its historic rivers, the Tigris and Euphrates, following the construction of dams by neighboring Iran and Turkey, Iraq is “in the face of the worst drought crisis in its modern era.” ».
We got nothing
Similar to Khamis Ahmed, the drought prompted 447 families of displaced people returning after they were displaced by ISIS years ago, to leave again, between June and July 2021, in light of temperatures exceeding 50, and this number reached 2,982 families in the south and central regions, where The summer has been harsher, according to the International Organization for Migration.
And year after year, the water crisis in Iraq worsens with the decline in rainfall rates and the extension of drought, until Iraq has become the “fifth country in the world” most affected by climate change, according to the United Nations.
At the global level, climate change is causing stronger and more intense droughts, threatening primarily the food security of populations around the world, and there is a real risk that droughts will increase even if the world manages to limit the warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius compared to the pre-industrial era. .
This was directly reflected in the life of the farmer, Adnan Khalil Ahmed, bemoaning the abundance of production in 2020, and the 63-year-old man tells from his field located on the side of a road linking Mosul and Tel Kaif: “There is no rain in the season of 2021, and no agricultural season, we did not harvest. something.”
The man, who inherited the agricultural profession from his father in a wheat field of 3,500 dunums, adds: "We spend large additional sums on agriculture and marketing, which forces many farmers to borrow."
Instability
Akram Yassin, who sold part of his 500 livestock "so that I can live", also has the idea of giving up the agricultural profession.
From his field in the village of Al-Qaim in Tel Kaif district, in the governorate that witnessed the atrocities of ISIS, the 28-year-old tells: “Maybe I change my profession. I lose more than I win.
The young man, who has been farming for 15 years, added: "I also had to borrow to cover the expenses of agriculture."
To the north in Dohuk in the Kurdistan region, the lack of rain caused the entire Zawita Dam to dry out, which led to the damage of fig and pomegranate crops in the neighboring fields, and caused great damage to about 25 farmers such as Bahjat Bazid Yousef.
The man, who has been farming for 21 years, says: "Because of the drought of the dam, our farm suffered a great deal of material damage. Most of the fig trees were damaged, and about 5,000 to 6,000 grape dahlias dried up."
The dam depends on snow and rain water, but the director of irrigation in Dohuk Governorate, Heza Abdul Wahed, explains that "the rain was very little last season."
These conditions cause more crises, and Roger Ghiwi, director of the Social Enquirer Research Center in Erbil, explains that “this random displacement to cities, such as Mosul and Kirkuk, would also create a state of instability, as these cities are not well prepared.” Good for this huge influx. It is already fragile.”
Until last summer, four years after the expulsion of ISIS from Mosul, about 80% of the city's infrastructure, especially roads, had been reconstructed, but only 30-40% of health facilities were repaired, according to the mayor of Mosul district, Zuhair al-Araji. .
After he was displaced to Mosul, Khamis Abbas found himself without work, and recounts, “I sometimes work small businesses and earn what supports my family, after I used to make a living from growing wheat and raising livestock in my field, which is irrigated only by rain.”
• Year after year, the water crisis in Iraq is getting worse, with the decline in rainfall rates and the extension of drought, until Iraq has become the “fifth country in the world” most affected by climate change, according to the United Nations.
• In 2020, Nineveh Governorate produced 927 thousand tons of wheat, achieving self-sufficiency, according to the director of the General Company for Grains in Nineveh, Abdul Wahab Al-Jarjari, but in 2021, the quantity decreased to 89 thousand tons due to drought and lack of rain.
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