Iran launches first overseas farming plan
Iran has launched agricultural cultivation in Kazakhstan, marking its first farmland investment overseas as the Middle Eastern country seeks to secure food supplies amid a lingering drought.
Cultivation has begun over eight hectares of farmland in the Central Asian country, with the next project expected to start in Ukraine in the next few months, Agriculture Ministry’s Mohammad Reza Shafeinia of Iran said.
A similar plan is in the works for Ghana whose agricultural sector accounts for over half of the African nation's gross domestic product and is the world’s second largest cocoa producer.
Water-intensive rice and corn crops as well as oilseeds and livestock inputs have been cited by Agriculture Ministry officials as the target products which Iran seeks to grow on farmlands overseas.
The semi-arid country is awaking to its water shortage vulnerability, rushing through a series of exigency plans to tide over the problem.
Iran has already abandoned a bid to achieve self-sufficiency in wheat, which like many other water-intensive commodities, involves using underground water to produce the staple.
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