Farmers
In Dire Straights
By Dahr Jamail &
Ali al-Fadhily
18 November, 2006
Inter
Press Service
BAGHDAD, Nov 16 (IPS)
- Despite the Iraqi prime minister's optimism for the agricultural sector,
the farmers who are struggling to survive tell another story.
In an address to Iraqi politicians
this week, Prime Minister Nouri Al-Maliki praised his government's performance
in agriculture. Maliki highlighted the new state-supported crop prices,
through which farmers would receive subsidies and encouragement to continue
growing their crops -- but he did not mention how much the price supports
would be.
"The prime minister
seems not to be aware of the real problems we are facing here,"
Haji Jassim, a farmer from the rural Al-Jazeera area near Ramadi, told
IPS. Speaking from a relative's home in Baghdad, he added, "What
he is talking about would have been good if prices were the only problem,
but someone should explain to him the other obstacles we are facing."
Jassim said that one of the
main problems is lack of manpower, "since most of our young men
who were not killed by U.S. and Iraqi troops are in jail or missing."
The frustrated farmer added
that obstacles like lack of electricity, fuel and security in the field
and "dozens of others, should be known to the man who claims to
be our supporter."
Under the regime of Saddam
Hussein, overthrown by U.S.-led forces in 2003, the government purchased
crops from farmers in order to encourage them to continue planting.
In this way, the government guaranteed that farmers would sell their
crops, regardless of how bad the market was under the economic sanctions
imposed by the United Nations in 1990.
Many farmers now even wish
the Saddam Hussein dictatorship had remained in place, since economic
hardship has become so severe under the U.S.-led occupation.
"What they call the
'condemned regime' used to supply us with everything we needed. Seeds,
fuel, trucks, harvest machines and anything we might need," Ali
Abdul-Hussein, a farmer from Diwaniya who used to produce rice but now
works as a simple laborer in Baghdad, told IPS. "We were happy
to get rid of Saddam, but now we wish to get half the services he used
to offer us."
The Iraqi economy as a whole
has been affected negatively by the occupation and the related problems
it has brought to Iraq. Some estimates of the unemployment rate are
as high as 50 percent, which is significantly higher than it was under
the sanctions.
According to the Integrated
Regional Information Networks, which is the UN's humanitarian news and
information service, "Up to half of the national population is
currently unemployed in Iraq, where women represent almost 60 percent
of the total populace."
In 2005, Iraq's Ministry
of Labour and Social Affairs estimated a 48-percent unemployment rate.
Further hampering farmers
is the fact that Iraq's inflation rate has soared to nearly 70 percent,
according to the country's planning minister, Ali Baban.
Baban told reporters in September
that prices had increased for all goods used to measure inflation, including
food, fuel, transport, medical services and medicine, clothing, property,
furniture and other essential goods.
Across Iraq, petrol and electricity,
both of which extremely important to Iraqi farmers, have seen the highest
increase: 374 percent over the last year. Also bad news for farmers
is that the transport sector saw a 218-percent hike in prices.
Thus, the cost of farming,
along with the average Iraqi's increasing inability to afford rising
market prices, has made everyday life extremely challenging.
Lack of security is another
problem that has hampered farmer's productivity.
"How can one deliver
any crops to Mr. Maliki's warehouses? Militias are taking firm positions
there and so if you are Sunni, they will kill you and take your money.
But if you are a Shi'ite, then they will only take your money and release
you for ransom," farmer Latif Hameed said in an interview.
One of the first and at the
time famous sectarian killings carried out by Shi'ite militias was in
the main Jameela wholesale market in Baghdad. Death squads killed 14
Sunni farmers from Madaiin while they were selling their vegetables
to merchants there.
Since that time, the market
has been effectively paralysed because the sharp increase in militia
activity means most farmers no longer feel safe there.
In addition, some Iraqi farming
experts blame malfunctioning infrastructure for hampering farmers' work.
Agriculture in Iraq will
not improve in the near future "because our soil was corrupted
by the water table rising due to a failure of functioning drainage systems,"
a university agriculture professor, speaking on condition of anonymity,
told IPS in Baghdad.
Drainage systems depend on
pumping machines that have come to a nearly complete stop because of
electricity and fuel shortages.
"Lack of supporting
material like fertilisers and soil treatment has affected agricultural
operation in the country, and even when it is available it is too costly
and badly manufactured," the professor added.
In a study to be published
soon by an Iraqi economics institute, over 75 percent of the vegetables
and fruit consumed in Iraq are imported from Syria, Jordan and Iran.
©2004-2006 Dahr Jamail.
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