Islamisk Stats fremrykning i det nordlige Irak har alvorlige konsekvenser for regionens landmænd og for fødevareproduktionen og fødevaresikkerheden. To af de provinser, der står for en betydelig del af Iraks samlede høst, er nu under de militante islamisters kontrol.
JURF-AL-SAKHAR/DUBAI, 26 November 2014 (IRIN) – November is usually a busy month for farmers in the Iraqi town of Jurf al-Sakhar as they sow their seeds ahead of the bitter winter months.
Yet this year fields lie unplanted and untethered goats and cows wander aimlessly among slayed palm trees.
Months of fighting have taken a heavy toll on the town, 60km south of Baghdad in Babil Governorate, leaving buildings in ruin and fields flooded or scorched – in many cases both.
The area has a ghostly emptiness. Although it was reclaimed from Islamist militants by Iraqi security forces in late October, many displaced residents have stayed away due to fears of landmines and other explosive remnants of war.
“I have lost everything,” Salih Al-Janabi, 56, a farmer from the area now based in neighbouring Musayib District, told IRIN.
“I grew up on my farm, it is a part of my family. My palm trees were my children and now I don’t know when I can even go back.”
Impact on food security
Across the country as the group calling itself Islamic State (IS) continues to hold large swathes of territory across central and northern Iraq, concern is growing not just about farmers’ lost livelihoods, but also the impact that uncollected harvests and the lack of winter planting will have on Iraq’s food security into next year and beyond.
“It is very difficult to make an estimation of how much farm land has been affected by this,” explained Alfredo Impiglia, the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) emergency coordinator in Iraq.
“The situation is very dynamic. One day you have access to an area, the next day you can’t reach it any more,” he said.
Many farmers have deserted their land, fleeing both the cruelty of IS, as well as the fighting between militants and various Iraqi government forces, and they now make up some of the 2.1 million people the UN estimates has been displaced since January this year.
But many have also stayed behind and are trying to keep farming against the odds.
One million tons of wheat taken to Syria
Large swathes of the governorates of Nineveh, which includes the city of Mosul, and Saleheddin, in northern Iraq, have been held by IS militants since June.
Together the two provinces account for nearly one third of the national wheat and nearly 40 percent of national barley production, according to the Global Information and Early Warning System on Food and Agriculture (GIEWS).
Officials say that a large number of silos – where farmers place their grain to be sold directly to the government at a subsidized rate – in Nineveh and Saleheddin are now in the hands of IS.
According to a statement by Iraq’s agriculture minister, Falah Hassan al-Zeidan, IS has appropriated more than one million tons of wheat and barley – approximately a quarter of overall national output – and taken it across the border to the Syrian cities of Raqqa and Deir al-Zor.
Militants take the land
The Iraqi government has shut all its offices in Mosul, making it impossible to administer payments to farmers who had delivered crops to silos before IS’s advance, leaving many out of pocket and unable to afford seeds to plant for next year.
The suspension of government services in Mosul also cuts off farmers from access to centrally-subsidized seeds, fuel and fertilizer – upon which they rely to make harvesting profitable – and that is expected to affect their capacity to plant for the coming season.
According to FAO, in Nineveh only around 500,000 hectares of the usual 800,000 hectares of land is likely to be sown this winter and planting in Saleheddin is forecast to be down by as much as 30 percent.
In Kirkuk, Mahdi Mubarak, the director of the agricultural directorate in the governorate and a member of the local branch of the Agricultural Engineers Association, said more than 300,000 hectares had been appropriated by militants.
“This is a big loss for our production and this leads to a big impact on the agricultural system and Iraq’s economy,” he said.
“Many farmers have been forced to leave their farms, either because of the damage to their lands or because of the lack of supplies, subsidies and government support.”
Farmers forced to sell at low prices
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