The working day has just begun for Eayka Abbas as the relentless sun rises over his farm in southern Iraq, overlooking the Euphrates River — the lifeline that allowed ancient Mesopotamia to thrive in the middle of the otherwise empty and dry Arabian desert. Yet, what once was a fertile oasis is now turning into a desolate land. For Abbas, 31, one of the few farmers who haven’t fled to the city, the challenges are nearly unbearable. Half of his farm is now barren as climate change and government mismanagement have made the soil too salty for anything to grow. “I swear to God, this is going to happen to my farm if the water stays salty like this.”
According to Human Rights Watch, Iraq, particularly in the south, is losing about 250 square kilometers (96 square miles) of arable land every year — roughly the size of Finland’s capital Helsinki. The construction of dams in the upstream rivers in Turkey and Iran, and higher evaporation rates prompted by climate change have reduced water flows of the Euphrates and Tigris rivers by 75% since 1975. This decline has allowed salty water from the Arabian Sea to seep into the rivers, turning previously fertile land into barren wastelands.
Abbas, like Iraqi farmers have done for generations, uses flood irrigation to water his farm. As the name suggests, this technique involves diverting water from the river to the farm via canals to flood the crops. Yet, the Iraqi government has long blamed farmers for unsustainable irrigation practices and advocated for the use of drip irrigation as a more sustainable solution amid ongoing water shortages. “The government told us to reduce our consumption of water and not to raise fish because it takes a lot of water,” says Abbas. “[They said] use drip irrigation, but we can’t grow vegetables if we use drip irrigation because our crops won’t grow with [it]. We have been doing this for generations, we don’t have experience growing other kinds of vegetables with other systems.”
Deeper Underlying Issues
Despite the government’s insistence on changing irrigation systems as a solution, the real problem runs much deeper. Before the US invasion of Iraq in 2003, the government maintained the canals and drainage systems in the farms, allowing excess water to return to the river. This process reduced the amount of salt left in the soil and minimized water usage. However, years of war, the fight against the rise of ISIS, and a focus on short-term oil profits have left the infrastructure in shambles. Farming has taken a backseat as the government prioritizes other issues.
“Two meters (six and a half feet) underneath the soil you had the pipes,” explains Abbas Abdul Kadhim Kazim, a 63-year-old farmer in the town of Al-Huwair. “[The drainage system] took the excess water back to the river. When we flooded the farm, the fresh water returned to the river. Before the government took care of the maintenance. We had no issues with our land, the farm was all green.”
Even when farmers use drip irrigation, it is difficult to avoid high levels of salinity as water is not properly drained.
“The government doesn’t care now. Before, you could plant everywhere and [vegetables] would grow. That’s not the case anymore. Before the water level was so high, we could even plant rice,” Kazim recalls while he walks into his house at eight in the morning as the temperature rises above 45 degrees Celsius (113 degrees Fahrenheit), too hot for anyone to be outside.
Abbas and Kazim, like many of their peers, are small landowners who solely rely on their farms for their sustenance. They can’t afford to purchase the required equipment without external help. Yet, entrenched corruption means most subsidies and drip irrigation systems handled by the government have gone to powerful landowners with ties to political parties and not small-scale plantations like them. “If the government helped us to change, we would change the system — drip irrigation is easier than flooding the farm, but I don’t trust them. They only care about themselves” says Abbas.
Before the US invasion of Iraq, the government used to subsidize farms with seeds, fertilizer, and machinery, so farmers would not have to go into debt before each seeding season began. Now, these are just memories of a distant past. During the 38 years Kazim has worked as a farmer, he recalls, “Everything was easier in the past, the government helped us with everything. You worked on the farm, you sold your produce and that was it. The government took care of everything else.”
