EDITORIAL : THE AZZAMAN, IRAQ

Southern Iraqi province expecting bumper harvest this year

Granaries and silos in the southern Province of Wasit are brimming with wheat and barley and new storage facilities are necessary, Governor Mahdi al-Zubaidi said.

Zubaidi urged the government to build new silos in his province, saying agricultural conditions had improved and better and more plentiful yields were expected.

“Our silos are full and we have not yet received all the harvest,” he said.

Wasit, of which the city of Kut is the provincial capital, is traditionally an agricultural province, but yields had receded in the past few years.

Last year, the province harvested 360,000 tons of both crops, but this year, according to Zubaidi, yields may exceed 500,000 tons.

The volume is a record for the province billed previously as Iraq’s breadbasket in the south.

“The yields are not only more plentiful but also of a much better quality,” the governor said.

He said more than 300 mechanical harvesters were involved in this year’s harvest campaign in the province.

There are no figures on yields of both crops in other southern Iraqi provinces. Harvest of wheat and barley starts early in southern Iraq.

But most of Iraq’s cereal output comes from the north, and specifically the Province of Nineveh of which the city of Mosul is the capital.

Harvest starts in Nineveh in late June.

Unlike southern Iraq, Nineveh’s plains rely mainly on rain water.

Agricultural officials say rainfall has been sufficient for both crops to grow properly.