Subsidized seeds distributed on farmers in Kirkuk

KIRKUK / IraqiNews.com: The Kirkuk agriculture department will distribute subsidized seeds on farmers on Wednesday to encourage them, the director of the department said. “The department will distribute today subsidized seeds on 1000 farmers (270,000 dinars for the ton) compared to the current price in the market 700,000 for the ton,” Mahdi Mubarak told IraqiNews.com. Kirkuk, 250 km (156 miles) north of the Iraqi capital Baghdad, sits on the ruins of a 5,000-year-old settlement. Because of the strategic geographical location of the city, Kirkuk was the battle ground for three empires, Assyria, Babylonia and Media which controlled the city at various times. Kirkuk is the centre of the northern Iraqi petroleum industry. It is a historically and ethnically mixed city populated by Assyrians, Kurds, Arabs and Iraqi Turkmen. The population was estimated at 1,200,000 in 2008. SH (P) 1