Baku, Azerbaijan, July 10
By Umid Niayesh - Trend:
Water consumption efficiency in Iran’s agriculture sector hardly reaches 44 percent, Alireza Parastar, an official with Iran’s agriculture ministry, said.
Parastar said that over 56 percent of water consumed in the agriculture sector is being wasted due to improper usage, the ministry said on its official website.
The lack of mechanization and the traditional agricultural methods are the most important reason for the low efficiency and waste of water in sector, the official said.
Parastar further said that the efficiency rate was 10 percent before implementation of Fourth Five-year Development Plan (2005-2010)
Under the country’s Sixth Five-year Development Plan (2017-2022) Iran’s water consumption efficiency should increase by 7 percent each year.
Iran’s total water output is almost 100 billion cubic meters, out of which about 78 percent is used in agriculture, according to the official statistics.
The agriculture ministry’s data says that over 35 million hectares of the country’s total 165 million hectares area are capable of cultivation.
Currently 12 million hectares of Iran’s agricultural lands are rain-fed and 8.7 million hectares are irrigated. Modern irrigation systems are used only on 1.8 million hectares of area which are under irrigated cultivation.
The Islamic Republic is located in an arid zone and the country is facing a serious water shortage crisis.
However, many experts believe that the current water shortage is a result of mismanagement of water resources, rather than drought.