Shafaq News

With water inflows to the Tigris and Euphrates at historic lows, Iraq is no longer adjusting agricultural policy at the margins but rewriting how the state controls what is grown, where, and under what conditions, a shift reshaping food security and economic planning.

The move reflects the severity of a water crisis that the official data by the relevant ministries now describe as structural rather than seasonal. Iraq’s total annual water inflows have fallen to between 25 and 40 billion cubic meters, roughly 30–40 percent of historical averages, while the country’s annual needs exceed 50 billion cubic meters. Strategic water reserves stored in major dams and lakes have dropped to between 7 and 10 billion cubic meters, sharply limiting Baghdad’s ability to absorb prolonged shortages.

Despite a slight improvement in water availability —estimated at no more than 700 million to one billion cubic meters following the 2025–2026 winter rains— the Ministry of Water Resources continues to classify the situation as a “national crisis,” citing the scale of accumulated deficits and the fragility of storage levels.

Under these constraints, Iraq’s government has moved away from expansion-oriented agricultural policies toward a model centered on restriction, prioritization, and enforcement. The winter agricultural plan for the 2025–2026 season, approved by the cabinet in October, authorizes cultivation on sharply reduced terms: 250,000 hectares using surface water and an additional 875,000 hectares relying on groundwater.

Crucially, the plan mandates the use of modern irrigation systems for all wheat cultivation, whether irrigated by surface or underground water. The government has linked compliance directly to market access, warning that wheat grown outside the approved plan will not be purchased by the state —a powerful enforcement tool in a country where public procurement remains central to farmers’ income.

For Iraqi policymakers, wheat occupies a unique position that extends beyond agriculture into economic risk management. As the country’s primary staple, it anchors food security by supplying subsidized flour to millions of households, while its state-controlled procurement allows authorities to influence prices, imports, and stockpiles directly.

Deputy Agriculture Minister Mahdi Sahar al-Jubouri explained to Shafaq News that the plan was adopted in two phases due to low inflows and depleted reserves, describing the turn toward modern irrigation as an unavoidable measure to preserve remaining water resources and sustain production.

The ministry, he said, is increasingly standardizing irrigation technologies by crop type, favoring drip systems for vegetables and sprinkler systems for wheat, barley, and fodder crops.

From a technical perspective, the shift toward modern irrigation offers measurable efficiency gains. Ministry advisers estimate that sprinkler systems can cut water consumption by 30–40 percent while reducing soil saturation and salinity —long-standing problems that have degraded arable land across central and southern Iraq.

Mahdi Dhamad al-Qaisi, an adviser at the Ministry of Agriculture, told our agency that the policy reflects a dual objective: conserving water while protecting soil quality, noting that the government has distributed roughly 12,000 modern irrigation systems with a 30 percent subsidy, allowing farmers to repay the remaining cost over a decade, with a grace period in the first year.

Read more: Iraq’s water crisis deepens: Reserves collapse, mismanagement continues

Yet the environmental logic of surface-water conservation carries a hidden cost. The growing reliance on groundwater transfers risk from rivers to aquifers, many of which recharge slowly and lack comprehensive monitoring. While groundwater has become a strategic buffer, analysts warn that unchecked extraction could undermine long-term sustainability, replacing one form of scarcity with another.

The economic implications of this governance shift are already visible in the contraction of cultivated areas, particularly for strategic crops, which has reduced domestic output and heightened Iraq’s exposure to international markets. Preliminary projections by the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) suggest Iraq’s wheat import requirements could rise to around 2.4 million tons in the 2025–2026 marketing season.

For a country that treats wheat as a pillar of food security and social stability, the figure signals a structural recalibration in which imports increasingly compensate for constrained domestic production, at a time of global price volatility and geopolitical uncertainty.

Agricultural expert Khattab al-Dhamin warned that declining productivity threatens food security and deepens dependence on external suppliers, exposing Iraq to price shocks similar to those triggered by the war in Ukraine. Beyond fiscal pressure, he said, reduced self-sufficiency “weakens the country’s ability to shield consumers from global market swings.”

According to economic analyst Mustafa al-Faraj, the governance shift also carries social consequences. “Iraq has already lost up to 60 percent of its agricultural land due to climate stress, water shortages, and declining rainfall, compounded by upstream flow reductions and weak domestic management,” he told Shafaq News, arguing that prolonged contraction is accelerating rural-to-urban migration, shrinking the agricultural workforce, and eroding a sector that once supported large segments of the economy. Poorly regulated imports, particularly of vegetables, have further undermined local producers, while delayed payments and limited support have reduced agriculture’s contribution to state revenues.

If current trends persist, al-Faraj warned, more farmers will abandon agriculture altogether or convert land into residential projects, aggravating unemployment, poverty, and pressure on urban infrastructure.

“Without sufficient investment in irrigation infrastructure, groundwater monitoring, and farmer inclusion, restrictive policies risk hollowing out the very sector they aim to preserve. Conversely, failure to impose limits could accelerate water depletion and deepen future crises,” al-Faraj suggested.

The path Iraq is charting underscores a broader reality: in water-stressed states, agriculture is an economic activity and a managed system shaped by scarcity, risk, and strategic trade-offs. How effectively Iraq navigates this transition will determine its economic resilience in an increasingly volatile climate.

Read more: Iraq’s climate collapse: A nation at risk

Written and edited by Shafaq News staff.