In a meeting with Iraq’s Minister of Agriculture Abbas al-Maliki during the first meeting of the Iran-Iraq Joint Agricultural Cooperation Committee held in Tehran on Saturday, Mohammad Ali Nikbakht pointed to the high scientific–technological potentials of the two countries in the agricultural sector and said that each of the two sides can take advantage of the existing facilities and scientific-specialized capacity of the other.
Nikbakht stressed the need for observing livestock standards and sanitary criteria within the framework of the agreement between the two sides and added that the year 2050, according to the prediction of economic experts, will be a very difficult year for the supply of food in the world and this issue will leave severer effects in the region due to climatic change and damages to basic resources such as water and soil.
With the adoption of appropriate measures, the two countries have high capacities to cooperate with each other in line with alleviating the possible damages, Iran’s minister of agriculture maintained.
Elsewhere in his remarks, Nikbakht assessed the ability of the country in producing agricultural and horticultural products as satisfactory and said, “With the proper planning made in the current (Iranian calendar) year (started March 21, 2023), the ministry managed to harvest 10 million tons of wheat, and the country would attain self-sufficiency in the cultivation of wheat within the next one or two years.”
Benefiting from fruitful stockbreeding experience, Iran is ready to share technical know-how with neighboring Iraq, he added.