ERBIL, Kurdistan Region - Halabja province kicked off its tenth annual Pomegranate Festival on Thursday, drawing thousands of visitors across the region.
The three-day event, held at Halabja's central park, features a variety of pomegranates and locally produced honey, vinegar, and dried fruits with contributions from more than 500 farmers.
Halabja is known for producing the finest pomegranates in the Kurdistan Region and Iraq.
"If you find one bad pomegranate, smash it on my head," Mohammed Salih, a farmer from Halabja, said, challenging customers as he was piling his produce on a bench.
The annual festival also hosts cultural activities where locals exhibit a variety of homemade goods and cuisine.
"The Pomegranate Festival is not just pomegranates...it has music, handwork, walnuts, and dried food that our area is popular for," Nuksha Nasih, Halabja governor, told Rudaw's Hiwa Jamal on Thursday.
The festival serves as a marketing opportunity for pomegranate farmers, traders, and family businesses.
Nasih said that around 700,000 thousand tourists are expected to visit the festival this year, where "2,000 vendors, orchard owners, and farmers" exhibit their products.
“I have been preparing for this for the past seven days,” said Sheikh Shamal Jabbar, a farmer from Erbil wearing a red Kurdish traditional costume to match the burgundy pomegranate color."Pomegranates are everywhere, but of course, Halabja's pomegranates are different," Jabbar added.
During the three-day festival, pomegranate enthusiasts from across the region head to the border province which lies about 14 kilometers from Iran and approximately 150 kilometers southeast of Erbil.
Karzan Dilzar, a farmer from Erbil drove four hours to purchase and taste the locally produced fruit, saying, “Indeed, it's a special festival. It feels like a feast.”
"The pomegranates that are available in Halabja can be found nowhere else," Dilzar added.
In 2022, pomegranates from Halabja were exported to Gulf countries for the first time, marking the Region's first non-oil export and a landmark step in efforts to broaden the economy.
Kurdish pomegranates arrived in the supermarket shelves of the United Arab Emirates (UAE) in April 2022, with the fruit being dubbed "premium grade" by Kurdish Prime Minister Masrour Barzani.
The Kurdistan Regional Government’s (KRG) agriculture ministry has on multiple occasions said they are willing to support farmers who want to export their pomegranates.
Halabja produced 12,500 tons of pomegranates planted on nearly 9,000 dunams of land in 2022, according to the city's agriculture directorate.
The current year’s harvesting season has just started; orchards in the province are expected to produce around 25-30 tons of pomegranates, according to Star Mahmoud, Halabja's Agriculture Director.
An estimated 270 thousand people flocked to last year's annual festival in which products valued around 1.3 billion Iraqi dinars (approximately 100,000 USD) were sold, Mahmoud said.
Sazgar Salah in Halabja contributed to this article.