BAGHDAD — Late July and early August is date harvesting season in Iraq, when within the span of a few weeks the desert sun turns hard green spheres into tender, golden brown fruit prized for its sweetness.
But here in Iraq, one of the places where agriculture was developed more than 7,000 years ago, there are increasing doubts about whether it makes much sense to grow dates — or much of anything for that matter.
As recently as the 1980s, Iraq was self-sufficient in producing wheat, rice, fruits, vegetables, and sheep and poultry products. Its industrial sector exported textiles and leather goods, including purses and shoes, as well as steel and cement. But wars, sanctions, poor management, international competition and disinvestment have left each industry a shadow of its former self.
Slowly, Iraq’s economy has become based almost entirely on imports and a single commodity.
“Ninety-five percent of the government’s revenues come from oil,” said Ghazi al-Kenan, an Iraqi economist. “And while they are trying to attract investment in the private sector, Iraq finds itself in very difficult circumstances — without sufficient electricity, machinery and a drought.”
The agricultural industry has been particularly damaged during the past few years, a situation perhaps nowhere more apparent than in the country’s once bountiful date orchards. Date palms have been left to die for lack of water, and fungi and pests have ruined thousands of tons of fruit because the country has only three crop-dusting airplanes and three qualified pilots. American military approval is still needed to fly.
Even the wealthiest and most influential date farmers are struggling. Faraoun Ahmed Hussain, the 62-year-old scion of a date-growing family who serves as the head of the government agency that oversees Iraq’s date production, said his family’s 62 acres in south Baghdad have been producing at the lowest level in memory.
“I could put more money into it, but the situation does not encourage it,” he said. “Under normal circumstances, the owner of such property would be a very wealthy man.”
Iraq, which once produced three-quarters of the world’s dates and grew 629 different varieties, is now an also-ran, falling behind Egypt, Iran and Saudi Arabia. Last year, the country produced 281,000 tons, according to the Ministry of Agriculture, about half the level of the mid-1980s.
The number of Iraq’s date palms has fallen, too, to fewer than nine million from 33 million in the 1950s, according to the government. Likewise, the number of date processing factories is down to six today, from 150 before the American-led invasion in 2003. Iraqi dates are now packaged in the United Arab Emirates — 865 miles away.
Iraqi and American officials say the declining fortunes in date production and other seasonal agricultural work have fed the insurgency with desperate, out-of-work young men.
The decline, Iraqi government officials say, has also led to both public health and environmental degradation. As growers have abandoned farms, the orchards that had once formed a lush green ring around Baghdad have shrunk, causing more frequent sandstorms in the capital this summer and higher rates of asthma and other respiratory illnesses.
Still, dates remain a staple in Iraq, valued for their ability to stay fresh without refrigeration, as a source of nutrition, and for uses as varied as making alcohol and desserts and feeding farm animals. They are also an inexpensive sugar substitute.
As the head of a partnership that includes his 12 brothers and 6 sisters, Dr. Hussain is the master of a once prosperous, now unkempt orchard on the banks of the Tigris River in the Dora neighborhood. On a blazing hot summer morning recently, he gave a tour. The story of the orchard, which his family has owned since 1910, has been one of slow decline.
Because the amount of money he receives for his crop from the Trade Ministry — the agency that buys most farm products in Iraq — is sometimes less than the cost of production, he says he no longer invests much in the farm.
Each year, even the most productive trees provide less. In normal times, each palm might produce 130 to 175 pounds of fruit a year.
Last year, each tree produced just about 30 pounds. This season, Dr. Hussain is hoping to rebound to 90 pounds per tree.
Many of the orchard’s 4,000 palms, which can live 120 years, are clearly unhealthy. A fair number have either brown fronds or a white fungus that resembles cobwebs.
Half of the orchard is irrigated by well water, the other half by the Tigris. But because of a drought, now in its second year, farmers have been ordered to limit irrigation to twice a month instead of once or twice a week.
Fruit trees — orange, grapefruit and pomegranate — planted beneath the palms, look to be nearly dying of thirst. The ground is bone dry and dusty.
Even some of the palms, which need very little water, are withering. Water salinity has also become a vexing problem.
Dr. Hussain pointed to some of the healthier palms.
“These trees are 40 years old, and I have some emotion, some love for them, because I planted them,” he said. “I’ve watched them grow.”
Even here, there are signs of Iraq’s war: Accompanying Dr. Hussain are five bodyguards, at least one of whom is armed.
And stationed at the edge of Dr. Hussain’s orchard is a 50-member Kurdish pesh merga military unit. They are protecting the home of Jalal Talabani, Iraq’s president, who is Kurdish and lives across the river from the orchard.
Dr. Hussain said that despite the instability brought by the war, Iraq’s date industry could recover if the Trade Ministry would increase payments to farmers.
And if Iraq’s date orchards can be restored to their former glory, he said, the rest of Iraqi agriculture might be able to similarly rebound.
The Trade Ministry, however, has said that given continuing depressed international prices for oil — Iraq’s lone dependable export — it cannot afford to raise payments to farmers.
None of Dr. Hussain’s children want to have anything to do with the family’s date orchard. His son is a pharmacist, his eldest daughter an engineer. The youngest daughter is a science student, but has no interest in agriculture.
Dr. Hussain said the date farm would almost certainly die with him.
“It will be sold,” he said shrugging. “It will be painful for me to do that, but I accomplished my duty for my family and for my tradition. There is nothing else to be done.”
Mohammed Hussein contributed reporting.
