NAJAF, Iraq: After seeing his once-lush rice fields shrink in recent years due to relentless drought, Iraqi farmer Muntazer Al-Joufi fought back with tougher seeds and water-saving irrigation techniques.
“It's the first time we're using modern techniques that use less water” to grow rice, Joufi, 40, said as he surveyed his land in the central province of Najaf.
“It's a huge difference” compared to flooding the field, Joufi added, referring to a traditional method where the land must be under water all summer.
But four consecutive 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 of the diet.
The UN says that Iraq is one of the world's five most climate-vulnerable countries.
Joufi is among 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 the flooding method in a country hit by water shortages, heat waves and receding rivers.
Under Iraq's scorching sun, with temperatures topping 50 degrees Celsius (122 Fahrenheit), Joufi trudged across the muddy field, pausing to attend to faulty sprinklers scattered across his one hectare (2.5 hectare) of land.
Iraq's rice harvest typically requires between 10 and 12 billion cubic meters of water over the five-month growing period.
But experts say new methods of sprinkler and drip irrigation use 70 percent less water than the traditional flooding method, when workers had to make sure fields were completely covered with water.
Now, Joufi said, it only takes “one person to turn on the sprinklers… and the water reaches every patch of land.”
Agriculture Ministry experts say that during the years of drought, the area planted with rice has shrunk from more than 30,000 hectares to just 5,000.
“Because of the drought and water shortage, we have to use modern irrigation techniques and new seeds,” said Abdel Kazem Jawad Moussa, who leads a team of such experts.
They have experimented with different types of sprinklers, drip irrigation and five different types of seeds that are drought tolerant and use less water in the hope of finding the best combination.
“We want to learn which seed genotypes respond well” to sprinkler irrigation instead of flooding, Moussa said.
Last year, Al-Ghari – a genotype from Iraq's prized amber rice – and South Asian jasmine seeds produced good results when grown with small sprinklers, so experts offered the combination to farmers like Joufi, hoping for the best.
“At the end of the season we will make recommendations,” Moussa said, adding that he also hoped to introduce three new types of seeds next year with a shorter planting season.
In addition to drought, authorities blame upstream dams built by Iraq's powerful neighbors Iran and Turkiye for dramatically lowering 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 enough drinking water for Iraq's 43 million people.
In 2022, the authorities limited rice cultivation areas to 1,000 hectares in Najaf and the southern province of Diwaniyah, the heartland of planting amber rice.
Recently, farmers in Diwaniyah protested and called on the government to allow them to cultivate their lands after a two-year hiatus.
But despite abundant rains this winter that helped ease the water shortage, 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, the country remains dependent on imports to meet its energy needs and faces chronic power outages.
Yassiri called on the authorities to help, especially by providing farmers with electricity and pesticides.
His cousin Bassem Yassiri was less hopeful. “Water shortages have stopped agriculture in this region,” he said.
