Shafaq News
With water inflows to the Tigris and Euphrates at historic lows, Iraq is
no longer adjusting agricultural policy at the margins but rewriting how the
state controls what is grown, where, and under what conditions, a shift
reshaping food security and economic planning.
The move reflects the severity of a water crisis that the official data
by the relevant ministries now describe as structural rather than seasonal.
Iraq’s total annual water inflows have fallen to between 25 and 40 billion
cubic meters, roughly 30–40 percent of historical averages, while the country’s
annual needs exceed 50 billion cubic meters. Strategic water reserves stored in
major dams and lakes have dropped to between 7 and 10 billion cubic meters,
sharply limiting Baghdad’s ability to absorb prolonged shortages.
Despite a slight improvement in water availability —estimated at no more
than 700 million to one billion cubic meters following the 2025–2026 winter
rains— the Ministry of Water Resources continues to classify the situation as a
“national crisis,” citing the scale of accumulated deficits and the fragility
of storage levels.
Under these constraints, Iraq’s government has moved away from
expansion-oriented agricultural policies toward a model centered on
restriction, prioritization, and enforcement. The winter agricultural plan for
the 2025–2026 season, approved by the cabinet in October, authorizes
cultivation on sharply reduced terms: 250,000 hectares using surface water and
an additional 875,000 hectares relying on groundwater.
Crucially, the plan mandates the use of modern irrigation systems for
all wheat cultivation, whether irrigated by surface or underground water. The
government has linked compliance directly to market access, warning that wheat
grown outside the approved plan will not be purchased by the state —a powerful
enforcement tool in a country where public procurement remains central to
farmers’ income.
For Iraqi policymakers, wheat occupies a unique position that extends
beyond agriculture into economic risk management. As the country’s primary
staple, it anchors food security by supplying subsidized flour to millions of
households, while its state-controlled procurement allows authorities to
influence prices, imports, and stockpiles directly.
Deputy Agriculture Minister Mahdi Sahar al-Jubouri explained to Shafaq
News that the plan was adopted in two phases due to low inflows and depleted
reserves, describing the turn toward modern irrigation as an unavoidable
measure to preserve remaining water resources and sustain production.
The ministry, he said, is increasingly standardizing irrigation
technologies by crop type, favoring drip systems for vegetables and sprinkler
systems for wheat, barley, and fodder crops.
From a technical perspective, the shift toward modern irrigation offers
measurable efficiency gains. Ministry advisers estimate that sprinkler systems
can cut water consumption by 30–40 percent while reducing soil saturation and
salinity —long-standing problems that have degraded arable land across central
and southern Iraq.
Mahdi Dhamad al-Qaisi, an adviser at the Ministry of Agriculture, told
our agency that the policy reflects a dual objective: conserving water while
protecting soil quality, noting that the government has distributed roughly
12,000 modern irrigation systems with a 30 percent subsidy, allowing farmers to
repay the remaining cost over a decade, with a grace period in the first year.
Read more: Iraq’s water crisis deepens: Reserves collapse, mismanagement continues
Yet the environmental logic of surface-water conservation carries a
hidden cost. The growing reliance on groundwater transfers risk from rivers to
aquifers, many of which recharge slowly and lack comprehensive monitoring.
While groundwater has become a strategic buffer, analysts warn that unchecked
extraction could undermine long-term sustainability, replacing one form of
scarcity with another.
The economic implications of this governance shift are already visible
in the contraction of cultivated areas, particularly for strategic crops, which
has reduced domestic output and heightened Iraq’s exposure to international
markets. Preliminary projections by the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO)
suggest Iraq’s wheat import requirements could rise to around 2.4 million tons
in the 2025–2026 marketing season.
For a country that treats wheat as a pillar of food security and social
stability, the figure signals a structural recalibration in which imports
increasingly compensate for constrained domestic production, at a time of
global price volatility and geopolitical uncertainty.
Agricultural expert Khattab al-Dhamin warned that declining productivity
threatens food security and deepens dependence on external suppliers, exposing
Iraq to price shocks similar to those triggered by the war in Ukraine. Beyond
fiscal pressure, he said, reduced self-sufficiency “weakens the country’s
ability to shield consumers from global market swings.”
According to economic analyst Mustafa al-Faraj, the governance shift
also carries social consequences. “Iraq has already lost up to 60 percent of
its agricultural land due to climate stress, water shortages, and declining
rainfall, compounded by upstream flow reductions and weak domestic management,”
he told Shafaq News, arguing that prolonged contraction is accelerating
rural-to-urban migration, shrinking the agricultural workforce, and eroding a
sector that once supported large segments of the economy. Poorly regulated
imports, particularly of vegetables, have further undermined local producers,
while delayed payments and limited support have reduced agriculture’s
contribution to state revenues.
If current trends persist, al-Faraj warned, more farmers will abandon
agriculture altogether or convert land into residential projects, aggravating
unemployment, poverty, and pressure on urban infrastructure.
“Without sufficient investment in irrigation infrastructure, groundwater
monitoring, and farmer inclusion, restrictive policies risk hollowing out the
very sector they aim to preserve. Conversely, failure to impose limits could
accelerate water depletion and deepen future crises,” al-Faraj suggested.
The path Iraq is charting underscores a broader reality: in
water-stressed states, agriculture is an economic activity and a managed system
shaped by scarcity, risk, and strategic trade-offs. How effectively Iraq
navigates this transition will determine its economic resilience in an
increasingly volatile climate.
Read more: Iraq’s climate collapse: A nation at risk
Written and edited by Shafaq News staff.
