Tehran, Iran, May 31
By Mehdi Sepahvand - Trend:
This year Iran will produce 12.5 to 13 million tons of wheat obviating the need for imports, according to Esmail Esfandiari, an agriculture official.
In the current crop year, about six million hectares of land plots are under wheat farming, of them 2.2 million hectares are irrigated and 3.8 million hectares are rain-fed, he said, the IRIB news agency reported May 31.
Last year, Iran produced 85 percent of its consumed wheat, while the preceding year the country could only produce 77 percent of it, the official added.
He counted good precipitation, regard for technical farming methods, increase in the government's guaranteed purchase price, and the opening of a credit line for mechanization as responsible for the boost in output.
The volume of Iranian government's guaranteed purchase of wheat from local farmers has surpassed two million tons, an Iranian official said last week.
The government bought more than eight million tons of wheat from Iranian farmers in the crop season of the last year.