Iraq’s wheat independence dashed by water crisis

• Drought and dams slash water reserves
• Harvest could be down by 50%
• Iraq ranks fifth for climate risk

Iraqi wheat farmer Ma’an al-Fatlawi has long depended on the nearby Euphrates River to feed his fields near the city of Najaf.

But this year, those waters, which made the Fertile Crescent a cradle of ancient civilisation 10,000 years ago, are drying up, and he sees few options.

“Drilling wells is not successful in our land, because the water is saline,” al-Fatlawi said, as he stood by an irrigation canal near his parched fields awaiting the release of his allotted water supply.

A push by Iraq – historically among the Middle East’s biggest wheat importers – to guarantee food security by ensuring wheat production covers the country’s needs has led to three successive annual surpluses of the staple grain.

But those hard-won advances are now under threat as the driest year in modern history and record-low water levels in the Tigris and Euphrates rivers have reduced planting and could slash the harvest by up to 50 percent this season.

“Iraq is facing one of the most severe droughts that has been observed in decades,” the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO)’s Iraq representative Salah El Hajj Hassan told Reuters.

The crisis is laying bare Iraq’s vulnerability.

A largely desert nation, Iraq ranks fifth globally for climate risk, according to the UN’s Global Environment Outlook. Average temperatures in Iraq have risen nearly half a degree Celsius per decade since 2000 and could climb by up to 5.6C by the end of the century compared to the period before industrialisation, according to the International Energy Agency. Rainfall is projected to decline.

But Iraq is also at the mercy of its neighbours for 70 percent of its water supply. And Turkey and Iran have been using upstream dams to take a greater share of the region’s shared resource.

The FAO says the diminishing amount of water that has trickled down to Iraq is the biggest factor behind the current crisis, which has forced Baghdad to introduce rationing.

Iraq’s water reserves have plunged from 60 billion cubic metres in 2020 to less than four billion today, said El Hajj Hassan, who expects wheat production this season to drop by 30 percent to 50 percent.

“Rain-fed and irrigated agriculture are directly affected nationwide,” he said.

In response to the crisis, the ministry of agriculture capped river-irrigated wheat at 1 million dunams in the 2025-2026 season – half last season’s level – and mandated modern irrigation techniques including drip and sprinkler systems to replace flood irrigation through open canals, which loses water through evaporation and seepage.

A dunam is a measurement of area roughly equivalent to a quarter acre.

The ministry is allocating 3.5 million dunams in desert areas using groundwater. That too is contingent on the use of modern irrigation.

“The plan was implemented in two phases,” said Mahdi Dhamad al-Qaisi, an advisor to the agriculture minister. “Both require modern irrigation.”

Rice cultivation, meanwhile, which is far more water-intensive than wheat, was banned nationwide.

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One tonne of wheat production in Iraq requires about 1,100 cubic metres of water, said Ammar Abdul-Khaliq, head of the Wells and Groundwater Authority in southern Iraq. Pivoting to more dependence on wells to replace river water is risky.

“If water extraction continues without scientific study, groundwater reserves will decline,” he said.

Basra aquifers, he said, have already fallen by three to five metres.

Groundwater irrigation systems are also expensive due to the required infrastructure like sprinklers and concrete basins. That presents a further economic challenge to rural Iraqis, who make up around 30% of the population.

Some 170,000 people have already been displaced in rural areas due to water scarcity, the FAO’s El Hajj Hassan said.

“This is not a matter of only food security,” he said. “It’s worse when we look at it from the perspective of livelihoods.”

At his farm in Najaf, al-Fatlawi is now experiencing that first-hand, having cut his wheat acreage to a fifth of its normal level this season and laid off all but two of his 10 workers.

“We rely on river water,” he said.