Kurdistan
Abdullah Hamad, 55, walking in his farmland in the Kurdistan Region's Duhok province on April 27, 2022. Photo: Rudaw
SEMEL, Kurdistan Region - Severe drought is expected to heap a dreadful misery on agriculture in Duhok province's Semel district as the Region experiences a lower rate of rainfall this year, leading to farmers losing 80 percent of their crops.
Impacted by the crisis, Abdullah Hamad, a 55-year-old farmer in Duhok, claims that since last year, he has lost 100 million dinars (68,000 dollars) in damages due to a dramatic plummet in rainfall levels which destroyed 2,000 dunams (almost 1,300 acres, or around 5 square kilometers) of his farmland planted with wheat. An Iraqi dunam is roughly 2,500 square meters.
"It has been two years since our situation started to be bad because of the drought. We will lose 100 percent of our products [this year]," Hamad told Rudaw on Wednesday, adding that he believes he may not even harvest one grain of wheat.
"The condition of the crops is bad. Every single farmer will see damage in one way or another. Last year and this year, I planted 2,000 dunams and I did not harvest a single spikelet," he added, complaining that despite seeing damages, the Iraqi government has not yet paid them for the wheat they sold to them in 2014, 2015, and 2016.
"I hope the Iraqi and the Kurdistan governments can help us, so we can buy seeds and plant them ourselves," he added.
At 176mm, Duhok has seen record low rainfall over the past half a century, according to data from the Duhok Meteorological Directorate. Geologists have warned that farmers have borne the brunt of the natural crisis over the past two years.
The General Directorate of Agriculture in Duhok says it has proposed suggestions for overcoming the crisis that has haunted the farmers in the area, but the crisis is worsening.
Duhok province has nearly 2,000 farm wells. Many of them have already seen a decline in their groundwater levels.
Officials have warned that the Kurdistan Region is in the midst of a water crisis due to a lack of rain, government funds, and issues of water-mismanagement both internally and across the region, such as dams in neighboring Turkey and Iran.
Iraq is the fifth-most vulnerable nation in the world to the effects of climate change, including water and food insecurity. Last week, a senior adviser at the Iraqi water resources ministry warned that the country’s water reserves have decreased by half since last year, due to a combination of drought, lack of rainfall and declining river levels.
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