Population, food, and the coming up starving ghost

2022-06-05

Prof. Dr. Kamal Saleh Gazgouz Al-Ani

Member of the Board of Directors of the Upper Euphrates Basin Development Center and a lecturer at the College of Literature / University of Anbar

An article published on the website of the College of Literature / University of Anbar on 4/22/2022

How do we import and how do we work for the purpose of issuing an emergency law that cares food security and most importantly how do we produce and invest agricultural lands?

Whenever we want to forget or ignore the pessimistic theory of Malthus, which threatens starvation in view of.The lack of food and the increase in population numbers brings to mind the implications of the existing reality, especially after the Russian-Ukrainian war, whose repercussions began to be clear at the global level, especially countries that suffer from lack of production and the decline of agricultural lands for various reasons, and Iraq is a clear example of that and this is a very dangerous matter in front of the too slow procedures as the problem escalates globally. According to the economists and scientists, including agricultural researchers and academics, despite all the warnings and recommendations in their studies, they were not taken into consideration. Therefore, the warning banner and ring the alarm bells before it is too late by taking the necessary measures and in multiple ways, the most important of which is the agricultural aspect and its types of plants and animals before it is how we import and how we work for the purpose of issuing an emergency law that cares about this, and most importantly, how do we produce and invest agricultural lands.

Through this, the subject is applied to Iraq, assuming that its population is 35 million, with the individual’s share being 9 kilograms of flour, which is 10 kilograms of wheat before grinding. This requires a one-month (350) thousand and in a year up to 4.2 million tons, as well as serious problems facing the agricultural production of this crop, only the natural ones, which are represented by the lack or scarcity of rain for this year and the previous one, as well as the decline in the quantities of water entering Iraqi territory and human factors of all kinds which was more dangerous than the previous one.

As for other agricultural crops, despite their importance, they do not reach the level of the first food (bread), and the other part of agricultural production is the animal aspect and its importance through its types, and it is in a situation that may be worse because it depends on the plant aspect as a source of fodder, but import has become dominant, despite its inability in the face of what is happening globally.

The question is where is the Iraqi Agriculture from this matter?. Especially the vast gap between the population and food at a negative equation. The matter doesn’t only stops at that, but that the salinity of the agricultural soil continues, its fertility deteriorates and its productive capacity declines, which means the invasion of desertification, which continues in pace with the urban sprawl that has not been deterred by law, the inertia of agricultural land and the tendency of most of it to non-agricultural use. The agricultural planning that has fallen into decline due to its connection with agricultural policy and related economic factors, even if there are some of them You need agricultural but at high prices.

All of the aforementioned decline and drops in yield and production rates, offset by a strong demand for consumer mouths and empty stomachs, and an annual increase in the population that does not less than 3.5% as a rate, bearing in mind that what restaurants and events start with has not been calculateddifferenceIts types and this is another evidence mentioned yesterday by the Iraqi Ministry of Planning of the high rates of poverty through which many social problems occur. This is the case of Iraq, not the Arab and European countries are better than our situation if not the situation we are in continues.