Iraq buys record quantity of locally produced wheat
The General Company for Grain Trade, which is the state company responsible for purchasing grain in Iraq, announced on Sunday that it bought 6.3 million tons, the most locally produced wheat ever recorded in its history.
The step is part of the Iraq Trade Ministry’s initiative to boost local agriculture and improve food security, according to a statement cited by the Iraqi News Agency (INA).
The Iraqi Minister of Trade, Atheer Al-Ghurairy, stated in March that Iraq has become self-sufficient and does not require the import of wheat in order to maintain its strategic stocks.
Al-Ghurairy said in January that Iraq does not plan to import wheat this year because the country has large stocks sufficient for seven months with expectations of a bumper crop.
The Iraqi Ministry of Agriculture mentioned earlier that Iraq, where the population is 43 million people, requires between 4.5 million and 5 million tons of wheat every year.
The huge yield produced in 2023 reflects the shift towards cultivating wheat in desert areas using groundwater instead of Iraq’s decreasing river water, as the country is going through the worst drought recorded in its history.
Iraq was self-sufficient in wheat during the three years before the war in Ukraine, with production of 4.7 million tons in 2019, 6.2 million tons in 2020, and about 4.2 million tons in 2021.
However, factors such as water scarcity and desertification led to a decrease in the local production of wheat, which reached about three million tons last season, prompting the Iraqi government to import wheat to cover the shortfall.
