2025-12-10T13:26:29+00:00
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Shafaq News – Baghdad
Iraq is losing some of its most
productive farmland as expanding cities push deep into agricultural belts that
once sustained local markets and rural livelihoods. The shift is accelerating
under rising demand for housing, shrinking water supplies, and weakened
oversight.
Population movements and changing
settlement patterns have intensified this pressure, with official figures showing
Iraq’s urban share rising from 66 to more than 71 percent between 2000 and
2020—an increase of six million city residents that has drawn development
toward the edges of cultivated zones.
The legal framework governing
farmland is clear. Mahdi Damad Al-Qaisi, adviser to the Ministry of
Agriculture, told Shafaq News that Agricultural Land Lease Law No. 24 of 2024 affirms
that farmland belongs to the Ministry of Finance and is managed by the
Agriculture Ministry. Reclassifying any plot for residential or service use
requires a multilayered review culminating in a Cabinet Secretariat committee
that includes representatives from finance, agriculture, defense, interior, and
antiquities. “No land changes status without that committee’s approval,” he
stressed.
Enforcement, in practice, has lagged
behind the pace of construction. Unauthorized building has appeared across
several provinces, with agriculture directorates documenting violations and
referring them to governors for removal—an effort often slowed by limited
administrative capacity.
In Babil, the consequences are
immediate. Speaking with our agency, farmer Abu Hussein said nearby fields are
being subdivided into housing lots, fragmenting cultivated land and worsening
water shortages that now damage his date orchards. “If this continues,
cultivation here will collapse,” he warned.
Economist Ahmed Eid described Iraq’s
outward urban growth as a double-edged trend: it answers housing demand but undercuts
food security by consuming thousands of dunams of fertile land. “Weak planning
and unchecked horizontal expansion,” he explained, “are shrinking the
agricultural belt, reducing local production, and increasing reliance on
imports,” urging a shift to vertical development, stronger land-protection
laws, and modern, smart-irrigation systems to prevent further loss.
Environmental stresses compound the strain. Iraq has
forfeited nearly 30 percent of its productive farmland over the past three
decades due to drought, reduced river flows, and extreme heat. Recent seasons
have been among the driest in modern history, with crop yields in Nineveh,
Babil, and Diyala falling by 40–70 percent. The Central Statistics Office
reported in November that 96,500 square kilometers of Iraq are now classified
as desert or at risk of desertification, including 40,400 square kilometers
that are fully desertified.
Read more: Iraq burns: Dust, drought ravage the nation’s core
Demographic pressure is rising in
parallel. Iraq’s first census in 37 years recorded a population of 46.1
million. Former Planning Minister Nouri Al-Dulaimi cautioned that approaching
50 million people will widen gaps in services and land management unless
development accelerates.
Read more: Census shock: Can Iraq’s system absorb its population explosion?
With farmland shrinking under urban
and environmental pressures, Iraq’s agricultural base is nearing a critical
threshold—one that will require strict enforcement, strategic urban planning,
and targeted investment to prevent irreversible loss.
