NEJAF, Iraq: After seeing his once-luxurious rice fields dwindle in recent years due to a relentless drought, Iraqi farmer Muntazer Al-Jufi fought back by using tougher seeds and water-saving irrigation methods.
“This is the first time we are using modern methods that use less water” to grow rice, said Jufi, 40, as he surveyed his land in the central Najaf province.
“There's a huge difference” compared to flooding the field, Juffey added, referring to the traditional method where the land must remain under water all summer.
But four years of drought and declining rainfall have stifled rice production in Iraq, which is still recovering from years of war and chaos and where rice and bread are staples.
The United Nations believes that Iraq is among the five most climate-vulnerable countries in the world.
Jufi is among the farmers receiving support from the Ministry of Agriculture, whose specialists are developing innovative methods to save rice production in Iraq.
Their work involves combining sustainable rice seeds with modern irrigation systems to replace the flooding method in a country plagued by water shortages, heat and shrinking rivers.
Under the scorching Iraqi sun, with temperatures reaching 50 degrees Celsius (122 Fahrenheit), Jouffi trudged across a muddy field, pausing to look at malfunctioning sprinklers scattered across his hectare (2.5 acres) of land.
A rice crop in Iraq typically requires 10 to 12 billion cubic meters of water during a five-month growing period.
However, experts say the new methods, using sprinklers and drip irrigation, use 70 percent less water than traditional flooding practices, where workers had to make sure fields were completely covered with water.
Now, Juffey said, all it takes is “one person to turn on the sprinklers … and the water will reach every part of the land.”
Experts of the Ministry of Agriculture say that during the years of drought, rice crops have decreased from more than 30,000 hectares to only 5,000.
“Because of the drought and water shortage, we have to use modern irrigation methods and new seeds,” said Abdel Kazem Javad Moussa, who heads a group of such experts.
They experimented with different types of sprinklers, drip irrigation and five different types of drought-resistant, water-intensive seeds in hopes of finding the best combination.
“We want to know which seed genotypes respond well” to sprinkler irrigation instead of flooding, Musa said.
Last year, Al-Ghari — a genotype derived from Iraq's prized amber rice — and South Asian jasmine seed produced good results when grown with small sprayers, so experts offered the combination to farmers like Jufi, hoping for the best.
“At the end of the season, we will make recommendations,” Musa said, adding that he also hopes to introduce three new types of seed next year with a shorter planting period.
In addition to the drought, authorities blame upstream dams built by Iraq's powerful neighbors Iran and Turkey for sharply lowering water levels in the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, which have irrigated Iraq for millennia.
Water shortages have forced many farmers to leave their plots, and authorities have drastically reduced agricultural activity to provide enough drinking water for Iraq's 43 million people.
In 2022, authorities limited rice planting areas to 1,000 hectares in Najaf and the southern province of Diwaniya, the center of amber rice planting.
Farmers in Diwania recently protested, calling on the government to allow them to cultivate their lands after a gap of two years.
But despite generous 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 Faez Al-Yasiri in his field in Diwaniya, where he hopes to grow amber and jasmine rice.
Iraq is the second-largest oil producer in the OPEC cartel, but despite its vast oil and gas reserves, it remains dependent on imports for its energy needs and faces chronic power outages.
Yasiri called on the authorities to help, particularly by providing farmers with electricity and pesticides.
His cousin, Bassem Yasiri, had less hope. “Water shortages have stopped agriculture in this region,” he said.
