After enduring four years of drought, Iraqi farmer Mohammed Sami was on the brink of abandoning his father’s arid land, but a water-saving irrigation system revived his crops and his hope.
He is among hundreds of farmers in the country battered by heatwaves, scarce rain and depleted rivers to benefit from new water management systems brought by the UN World Food Programme.
The systems use automated sprinklers and drip irrigation to ensure scarce water is used in the most efficient way and is not lost as run-off or evaporated under the blazing sun.
“Since 2019, due to the water scarcity, we have been unable to farm the land,” said 38-year-old Sami in his village of Al-Azrakiya in the central province of Anbar.
Crushed by the drought that was turning his 10 donums, or about one hectare, of land into desert, Sami started working in a nearby city as a day laborer several years ago. “I thought about giving up farming for good.”
But then, two years ago, Sami’s prospects changed, and his land flourished again.
The WFP helped with a new automated irrigation system that waters his field for just two hours per day, two to three days a week.
“I now irrigate 10 donums with the same amount of water that I used for one donum before,” he said, adding that his wheat harvest had shot up from seven to 12 tonnes per year.
Last year the WFP project helped more than 1,100 farmers “in areas most affected by climate change and drought,” said Khansae Ghazi from the UN agency’s Baghdad office.
Iraq, still recovering from years of war and chaos, is one of the five countries most impacted by some effects of climate change, according to the United Nations.
The site of ancient Mesopotamia, where civilisations flourished on the banks of the mighty Tigris and Euphrates rivers, Iraq now endures extreme water scarcity, worsened by upstream river dams in Iran and Turkey.
“Iraq is the Land of Two Rivers, its more than 7,000-year-old civilisation has always relied on farming,” said agriculture ministry spokesman Mohammed al-Khazai. “For decades, the country was afflicted by floods, not drought.”
The UN agency warns there are limits to the gains brought by new techniques.
“While modern irrigation systems can significantly improve water efficiency and agricultural practices in Iraq, it may not be sufficient to tackle the complex issue of drought,” it said.
But for now, farmers are happy with the gains they are seeing, among them Souad Mehdi in the village of Al-Azrakiya near the Euphrates, who said she has doubled her harvest.
