TEHRAN, Iran, June. 7
Trend:
The head of the National Union of Agricultural Products of Iran criticized Iran's weakness in agricultural diplomacy.
Countries that struggled to produce food have long been dominated, while the rise of the food dominance mechanism is intensifying with climate change, the head of the National Union of Agricultural Products of Iran Reza Nourani said, Trend reports citing ILNA.
"The risk of food supply domination is greater for countries that are most affected by climate change, such as Iran,” he added.
He went on to say that strong agricultural diplomacy can be a solution.
"Strengthening agricultural diplomacy can be started with the countries with which we have better political and economic relations," Nourani noted.
Referring to the recent visit of the Minister of Agriculture Jihad to Russia, he said that Russia is one of the countries with which we are very close in political issues and is an importer of our agricultural products.
“Russia has a large market with a high capacity for the consumption of agricultural products,” he said adding that unfortunately, Iran's share of trade is less in value.
He cited unilateral trade protocols as the reason for Iran's lower trade value in trade with Russia, despite its political proximity.
“Low import tariffs and high export tariffs do not allow win-win trade," Nourani said.
He suggested setting preferential tariffs, targeting exports, strengthening domestic production, eliminating the subsidized foreign currency at the official rate (42,000 rials per dollar) for imports as some of the things that can be addressed to strengthen Iran's agricultural diplomacy.