Barefoot on the rough trunk of a palm tree, his back wedged in a metal and fabric harness, Ali Abed begins climbing to cut bunches of dates. In Iraq, the tree that is a true national icon is valiantly trying to resist the drought.
Once nicknamed the country of “30 million palm trees”, Iraq saw its millennia-old culture threatened by conflicts, notably the war with neighbouring Iran (1980-1988), before the challenges of climate change arose in a Middle East affected by repeated droughts.
In the still lush countryside of central Iraq, in the Al-Qasim region, hundreds of palm trees stand tall and majestic next to vineyards and orchards.
In this harvest season in the province of Babylon, the branches bend under the heavy bunches of yellow or red dates. Up at dawn to avoid the scorching temperatures, the climbers hoist themselves up by the strength of their arms alone, supported by a harness, tightening a rope around the trunks.
“Last year, orchards and palm groves were thirsty, we almost lost them. This year, thanks to God, we had good quantities of water and the harvest is good,” says Mr. Abed, a 36-year-old farmer from the village of Biramana.
At the top, climbers pick only the ripe dates to fill a basket, which is then slid to the ground where it is emptied. The harvest is placed in basins, loaded onto a van.
But, Mr Abed acknowledges, the quantities he now harvests are far from the former highs. “Half,” he explains, before it was “more than 12 tonnes” compared to “four or five tonnes” today.
He complains in particular about insufficient commitment from the State, believing that public insecticide spraying campaigns, carried out using agricultural aircraft, do not meet the needs.
– “Paradise” lost –
For more than a decade, however, Iraq has been working to revive the date palm, a true national symbol and economic treasure.
The authorities, but also influential religious institutions, have launched programs and megaprojects to encourage planting and increase the number of trees.
A commitment that has allowed, “for the first time since the 1980s”, to increase to “more than 22 million” the number of date palms in Iraq, after it had fallen to eight million, rejoiced in August the spokesperson for the Ministry of Agriculture, quoted by the official agency INA.
Because during the Iran-Iraq war, on the border between the two countries, Baghdad had razed entire areas of palm groves, extending for kilometers, to prevent enemy infiltration.
Today, dates are the country’s second largest export product, just after oil, and bring in more than $120 million (around €108 million) annually, according to the World Bank.
In 2023, the country exported some 650,000 tonnes of dates, according to official statistics.
In the vicinity of the village of Janajah, here and there appear decapitated palm trees, others topped with dried branches.
“All these palm trees you see there are dead because of the drought, the whole area is suffering,” laments farmer Maitham Talib.
“Before we had water, people irrigated abundantly. Now we need complicated machines,” adds the fifty-year-old, who attends the morning harvest.
Considered by the UN as one of the five countries in the world most exposed to certain effects of climate change, Iraq experienced four consecutive years of drought before benefiting this winter from relatively more generous rains.
In addition to rising temperatures and erratic and declining rainfall, the country is suffering from a drastic drop in the flow of its rivers, which authorities blame on dams built upstream by influential neighbours Turkey and Iran.
Kifah Talib, 42, also denounces the ravages of the drought. Before, “it seemed like paradise: apple trees, pomegranates, citrus fruits and vines, everything grew,” he recalls.
at-tgg/anr
