FAO works to increase food security in Iraq

09/03/2015

FAO has taken immediate action to rehabilitate the seed industry in Iraq after the war in 2003. Working with the Iraqi Government, our focus was to help rehabilitate damaged infrastructure, provide internal and external training programmes for people in key seed industry disciplines and to review the Iraqi national seed policy and seed law.

FAO provided essential equipment (processing tools, farm equipment, seed processing machines, seed testing equipment), helped build seed testing laboratory buildings and greenhouses and coordinated the rehabilitation of damaged infrastructures in the research stations and laboratories.

The Iraqi National Seed Policy and seed act developed by FAO have been adopted by the Government of Iraq and have provided a blue print for seed industry development in the country, improving the Iraqi Ministry of Agriculture’s capacity to plan and program appropriate strategies in the field of agriculture.

To date, high quality seeds of major crops are available to Iraqi farmers, taking advantage of FAO’s provision of Iraqi research centers with equipment for crop improvement, seed multiplication and quality control. Efforts to increase production and productivity have seen an upward trend for the period 2008-2013.

Promoting efficient cattle breeding techniques
We have been working with government institutions and producers to increase production and productivity by introducing innovative cattle breeding techniques and setting up milk collection centres. Organizing farmers into associations around these centres has been a move that would continually help reduce losses, ensure better quality and expand marketing opportunities. Through these projects, we are promoting the creation of jobs along the dairy value chain – in production, processing and distribution – in rural and urban areas.

One of the biggest projects in the country was to ensure the complete rehabilitation of the Iraqi artificial insemination activity by importing pure Fresian bulls from Australia. From mid 2009 until the beginning of 2010 more than 220,000 frozen semen straws were produced. In 2014, the stored samples had reached 440,000 units in addition to the quantities distributed free of charge to cow owners.