The water crisis dashes Iraq’s dreams of self-sufficiency in wheat

Iraqi wheat farmer Maan Al-Fatlawi has long relied on the waters of the nearby Euphrates River to irrigate his agricultural land near the city of Najaf, but this year the water that made the Fertile Crescent the cradle of civilization 10,000 years ago dries up, and he has only limited options.

Al-Fatlawi said, as he stood next to an irrigation canal near his dry fields, waiting for the release of his share of water: “Drilling wells is useless on our agricultural land, because the water is salty and not suitable for agriculture, so we mainly depend on river water.”

Iraq, historically one of the largest wheat importers in the Middle East, sought to enhance food security through self-sufficiency in wheat production, and succeeded in recording surpluses of this main crop for three consecutive years.

But those gains are now under threat, as the driest year in modern history and a drop in water levels to record levels in the Tigris and Euphrates rivers have led to a decline in agriculture, which could reduce the harvest by up to 50% this season.

For his part, the representative of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) in Iraq, Salah Al-Hajj Hassan, said: “Iraq is facing one of the most severe drought waves in decades.”

The crisis reveals the fragility of Iraq’s situation, a mostly desert country that ranked fifth in the world in terms of exposure to climate change risks in the United Nations report on the global environment.

The International Energy Agency says that average temperatures have risen by about half a degree Celsius every 10 years, since 2000, and the increase may reach 5.6 degrees Celsius by the end of the century, compared to before the industrial revolution, and rainfall rates are expected to decrease.

But Iraq also depends on its neighbors to obtain 70% of its water supplies, and Türkiye and Iran use dams at the headwaters of rivers to acquire a larger share of the common resources in the region.

According to the FAO, the decreasing amount of water reaching Iraq is the biggest factor behind the current crisis, which prompted Baghdad to implement a water rationing system.

Haj Hassan said that water reserves in Iraq decreased from 60 billion cubic meters in 2020 to less than four billion today.

He added: “Rain-dependent agriculture and irrigated agriculture are directly affected nationwide.”

To end the country’s dependence on imports, the Iraqi government in recent years has funded the purchase of high-yield seeds and other supplies, encouraged modern irrigation mechanisms and desert agriculture to expand the agricultural area, and supported the purchase of grains by providing farmers with prices more than double international wheat prices.

Despite the high cost, this plan raised strategic wheat stocks to more than six million tons in some seasons, exceeding the capacity of storage silos in Iraq. Last September, the government, which purchased about 5.1 million tons of the 2025 crop, said that these stocks are sufficient to meet local needs for an entire year.

But others, including water expert and founder of the Center for Climate Change in Iraq, Harry Stepanyan, expect imports to rise again, exposing the country to a greater risk of rising food prices, with negative effects on trade and government budgets.

Stepanyan said: “The water and food security crisis in Iraq is no longer just an environmental problem, but rather has immediate economic and security repercussions.”

In its initial forecasts, the FAO estimates that Iraq’s needs for wheat imports for the 2025-2026 marketing season will rise to about 2.4 million tons.