Drought and Neglect Have Decimated Iraq’s Breadbasket
Farmland on the outskirts of Sulaymaniyah, Iraq, on Oct. 18. The region once contained some of the most fertile land in the country but is now polluted by municipal waste, illegal oil drops, and fetid sewage water.
Photographer: Alex Potter for Bloomberg BusinessweekEast of the Iraqi Kurdish city of Sulaymaniyah, malls and high-rise apartments give way to cement-block factories, warehouses, and junkyards. Tucked among a freeway, a gravel pit, and a trash heap as tall as a barn, Mohammed Osman plucks herbs from four acres of gray, cracked earth fed by sewage from a nearby drainage pipe.
Fifty years ago, Osman says, his family farmed more than 10 times that area, harvesting rice, watermelons, tomatoes, and cucumbers. Much of the land was seized by local officials to make way for factories—without compensation, he claims. What remains is barely fit to produce animal feed. “Honestly, I’m just keeping myself busy now,” Osman says. “This year, I rented three pieces of land and I paid 5 million dinars ($4,300)—and so far, I’ve only made 1 million back.”