ERBIL, Kurdistan Region of Iraq - Due to low amounts of rainfall, only 60 percent of arable land has been planted with wheat in the Kurdistan Region’s Duhok province, threatening food security, a local official told The New Region.

“In Duhok province, including the independent Zakho administration, we have 900,000 dunams of land that can be used for growing wheat. However, due to a lack of rainfall, only 60 percent of them have been planted with wheat this year,” Ahmed Jameel, an official at the Duhok agriculture department, told The New Region on Thursday. 

Jameel added that 250,000 of 450,000 dunams planted this year are manually irrigated.

“Farmers are forced not to plant their farmlands and many of them wait for rainfalls to start to plow their lands,” Jameel said, adding others are forced to “manually irrigate their crops.” 

There are a total of 1.1 million dunams of farmland across Duhok province. Of this number, 900,000 dunams are suitable for growing wheat, the official detailed. 

The Iraqi agriculture ministry said earlier this week that the country saw lower rainfall compared to the same period last year, signaling the country may suffer severe drought. 

The Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) has taken plenty of measures to prevent water scarcity, including building small and medium-sized dams.

The Kurdistan Region currently boasts 21 dams, including three large and 18 small and medium-sized ones, with the three giant ones having a combined capacity of reserving 10 billion cubic meters of water.