NAJAF, Iraq: After watching his once-thriving rice paddy field shrink in recent years due to relentless drought, Iraqi farmer Muntazer Al-Joufi responded by using hardier seeds and water-saving irrigation techniques.
“This is the first time we have used modern techniques that consume less water” to grow rice, said Joufi, 40, as he surveyed his land in the central province of Najaf.
“There is a huge difference” compared to flooding the field, Joufi added, referring to a traditional method where the land must remain submerged throughout the summer.
But four consecutive years of drought and declining rainfall have stifled rice production in Iraq, a country still recovering from years of war and chaos and where rice and bread are staples of the diet.
According to the United Nations, Iraq is one of the five most climate-vulnerable nations in the world.
Joufi is among the farmers receiving support from the Ministry of Agriculture, whose experts have developed innovative methods to save Iraq's rice production.
Their work involves pairing resilient rice seeds with modern irrigation systems to replace flood irrigation in a country plagued by water shortages, heat waves and drying rivers.
Under the scorching Iraqi sun, with temperatures soaring to 50 degrees Celsius (122 Fahrenheit), Joufi trudged across the muddy field, stopping to tend to the malfunctioning sprinklers scattered across his 2.5-acre (1.2-hectare) plot.
Typically, Iraq's rice crop requires between 10 and 12 billion cubic meters of water during the five-month growing period.
However, experts say that new methods using sprinkler and drip irrigation use 70 percent less water than the traditional practice of flooding, in which workers had to ensure fields were completely submerged in water.
Now, Joufi said, all it takes is “just one person to turn on the sprinklers… and the water reaches every plot of land.”
Agriculture Ministry experts say that during the drought years, the area under rice cultivation has shrunk from more than 30,000 hectares to just 5,000.
“Due to drought and water shortages, we need to use modern irrigation techniques and new seeds,” said Abdel Kazem Jawad Moussa, who leads a team of experts.
They experimented with different types of sprinklers, drip irrigation, and five different types of seeds that are drought-resistant and use less water, hoping to find the best combination.
“We want to find out which seed genotypes respond well” to irrigation using sprinklers rather than flooding, Moussa said.
Last year, Al-Ghari, a genotype derived from Iraq's prized amber rice, and South Asian jasmine seeds performed well when grown with small sprinklers, so experts pitched the combination to farmers like Joufi, hoping for the best.
“At the end of the season, we will present recommendations,” Moussa said, adding that he also hopes to introduce three new types of seeds next year with a shorter planting season.
In addition to drought, officials blame upstream dams built by Iraq's powerful neighbors, Iran and Turkey, which have dramatically lowered water levels in the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, which have irrigated Iraq for millennia.
Water shortages have forced many farmers to abandon their plots, and authorities have drastically reduced agricultural activity to ensure sufficient drinking water for Iraq's 43 million people.
In 2022, authorities limited rice cultivation areas to 1,000 hectares in Najaf and the southern province of Diwaniyah, the hub of amber rice cultivation.
Recently, farmers in Diwaniyah protested, demanding that the government allow them to cultivate their lands after a two-year hiatus.
But despite abundant rains this winter that have helped ease water shortages, authorities have only allowed them to grow rice on 30 percent of their land.
“The last good year was 2020,” said farmer Fayez Al-Yassiri in his field in Diwaniyah, where he hopes to grow amber and jasmine rice.
Iraq is the second largest oil producer in the OPEC cartel, but despite having huge oil and gas reserves, it remains dependent on imports to meet its energy needs and faces chronic power cuts.
Yassiri urged authorities to provide assistance, particularly by providing farmers with electricity and pesticides.
Cousin Bassem Yassiri was less confident. “Water shortages have put an end to agriculture in this region,” he said.
