Iran and the United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) are working on a project that aims to boost production sustainability in the drylands of the country, a senior official at the Iranian Agriculture Ministry has announced, Trend reports citing IRNA.
Faramak Aziz-Karimi, the director general at the ministry’s department for grains and basic products, made the announcement on the sidelines of the first national seminar on the joint project with FAO.
The project is an effort to identify farming methods aimed at boosting productivity in dryland agriculture, the official said on April 30.
He also said that the project has already been launched and is currently being implemented in four provinces namely East Azarbaijan, Ardebil, Hamedan, and Kurdistan.
Maragheh, in East Azarbaijan province in northwestern Iran, was the first city where the project began to be implemented, he added.
The project is of importance as Iran, already classified as a dry country, has been witnessing a sharp decrease in its annual rainfall over the past years.