Ahmad Khorshid has had a difficult year because of the drought.
“Everything is expensive now. If fodders were available and cheap like before, I could have survived. No one shepherds because of the lack of pasture,” he told Rudaw’s Hardi Muhammad Ali on Friday.
Khorshid has spent most of his life working as a shepherd in Jabal Bawr village, Kirkuk, but this is the first time he experiences such a lack in adequate pasture for his herd.
“I was only two years old when we came to this village. I am now 74 years old. I have never seen anything like this before,” Khorshid added.
Fodders were not necessary for the past years because farmers used to graze their sheep in a lush green pasture.
“The demand for buying and keeping animals decreased lately and most people sell their own animals because they cannot keep them,” Jawhar Ahmad, a local butcher, said.
Iraq is the fifth-most vulnerable nation in the world to the effects of climate change, including water and food insecurity.
A senior adviser at the Iraqi water resources ministry warned earlier this year 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.
