Iraq achieves self-sufficiency in wheat

Baghdad (IraqiNews.com) – The Iraqi Minister of Trade, Atheer Al-Ghurairy, stated on Tuesday that more than two million tons of wheat are stored in the ministry’s warehouses.

Al-Ghurairy added that Iraq is now self-sufficient and does not require the import of wheat in order to maintain its strategic stocks.

The Iraqi Trade Minister said in January that Iraq does not plan to import wheat this year because the country has large stocks sufficient for seven months with expectations of a bumper crop.

The Iraqi Ministry of Agriculture mentioned earlier that Iraq, where the population is 43 million people, requires between 4.5 million and 5 million tons of wheat every year.

The huge yield produced in 2023 reflects the shift towards cultivating wheat in desert areas using groundwater instead of Iraq’s decreasing river water, as the country is going through the worst drought recorded in its history.

Iraq was self-sufficient in wheat during the three years before the war in Ukraine, with production of 4.7 million tons in 2019, 6.2 million tons in 2020, and about 4.2 million tons in 2021.

However, factors such as water scarcity and desertification led to a decrease in the local production of wheat, which reached about three million tons last season, prompting the Iraqi government to import wheat to cover the shortfall.