Eco
Within the framework of government efforts to expand agricultural production and enhance food security in the country, relevant authorities have revealed the details of their strategy for the upcoming agricultural season, which includes introducing new types of crops and developing targeted areas. In this context, the Ministry of Agriculture announced on Friday the inclusion of new crops within the upcoming winter plan, including barley and yellow corn, alongside expanding the cultivation of soybeans. The ministry's spokesperson, Qusay Al-Hattab, explained in a statement to the official agency that the ministry has included barley and yellow corn crops in the upcoming winter plan, based on a proposal and directive from the Minister of Agriculture, indicating that the agricultural areas within the plan have expanded to exceed 7 million dunums. He added that the plan also included the inclusion of rain-fed lands in a number of Iraqi governorates, pointing out that Nineveh and Kirkuk governorates received the largest share of these lands. Regarding the introduction of new crops to the Iraqi agricultural environment, Al-Hattab clarified that the ministry, through the Directorate of Agricultural Research, has developed a research plan to develop soybean cultivation, which has not been grown in Basra Governorate for about 60 years. He indicated that specialized cadres worked within programs for maintaining and propagating high-grade seeds of the crop, parallel to adopting modern agricultural methods, including the transition from traditional agriculture based on tillage to conservation agriculture that relies on reducing or eliminating tillage, in addition to developing fertilization programs and replacing traditional methods with others based on agricultural scientific research. He pointed out that these efforts contributed to the cultivation of soybeans at the Qurna Research Station in Basra Governorate, affiliated with the Directorate of Agricultural Research, noting that the cultivation of the crop has expanded from one site to five sites in the governorates of Basra, Wasit, Anbar, Diyala, and Kirkuk, over areas he described as wide. Al-Hattab emphasized that these steps come within the framework of the ministry's orientation towards diversifying agricultural crops, developing technologies used in production, and benefiting from the results of agricultural research in expanding the scope of cultivating crops whose cultivation was limited or difficult in some regions of the country.
