Iraq bans summer crops as water crisis grows
Country has only enough water to irrigate half its farmland this summer, authorities say
Iraq has banned its farmers from planting summer crops this year as the country grapples with a crippling water shortage that shows few signs of abating.
Citing high temperatures and insufficient rains, Dhafer Abdalla, an adviser to Iraq’s Ministry of Water Resources, told AP that the country has only enough water to irrigate half its farmland this summer.
But farmers fault the government for failing to modernise how it manages water and irrigation, and they blame neighbouring Turkey for stopping up the Tigris and Euphrates rivers behind dams it wants to keep building.
Water levels across these two vital rivers — which together give Iraq its ancient name, Mesopotamia, the land between the rivers — fell by over 60 per cent in two decades, according to a 2012 report by the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organisation.
The orders against sowing rice, corn, and other crops this summer came as a shock to the towns and villages in the once fertile plains south of Baghdad, where the local economy depends on farming. Nationwide, one in five Iraqis works in agriculture.
In Iraq’s rice belt, the farmland is cracked and dry.
“I feel as though my very existence has been shaken,” said farmer Akeel Kamil as he surveyed his barren fields near the town of Mishkhab.
His 100 dunams — about 25 acres — last year produced 150 tonnes of Anbar rice, a strain particular to Iraq that is prized for its gentle, floral aroma. This year, the pumps that would be flooding his fields with water are silent, and the irrigation canal that runs by his property is nearly empty.
Flood irrigation has been used in the area for millennia, though FAO has warned of massive water wastage. It and other organisations are calling on the Iraqi government to revamp its approach to agriculture and promote more efficient methods including drip and spray irrigation. Iraq’s Natural Resources Ministry protests it does not have the budget to do that. Farmers staged demonstrations against the moratorium. In one instance, they forced the closure of a levee along a branch of the Euphrates River to let the water levels rise for irrigation.
They demand the government secure more water from Turkey, fill the country’s reservoirs, and drill into the nation’s aquifers.
The impact of waning water resources is clear around Mishkhab. Local divers and river patrols say their branch of the Euphrates is far shallower than it was this time last year. Green scum collects under bridges where the water has stagnated and fishing boats are stranded on the river bed.
Earlier this summer, video on social media showed the water levels of the Tigris River so low that Iraqis in Baghdad were crossing it on foot.
About 70 per cent of Iraq’s water supplies flow in from upstream countries. Turkey is siphoning off an ever-growing share of the Tigris and Euphrates to feed its growing population in a warming climate. And it is building new dams that will further squeeze water availability in Iraq.
Syria is expected to start drawing more water off the Euphrates once it emerges from the years-long civil war.