Water Ministry measures stop rice growing in Thi-Qar-official

THI-QAR/IraqiNews.com: Local agricultural official on Sunday said Water Resources Ministry’s regulations caused a total halt to rice growing in Thi-Qar. “Water resources Ministry threaten to use tough measures against farmers who grew rice in provinces,” Aqeel Salaman, chief of agricultural engineers in Thi-Qar, told IraqiNews.com He stressed the farmer grew 31.5 donums last year and their harvest yielded big quantities of rice. “Farmers were forced to gow rice illegally because it is their only means for living,” he explained. The official acknowledged the need for such measures, but he called for “imposing the rules justly over all regions”. In 2007, average rainfall was just 40 percent of the normal level in Iraq, falling more than half and severely affecting water levels and crop production according to latest statistics by the Agriculture Ministry. The drought has worsened the suffering of Iraqis struggling to cope with a chronic scarcity of water, electricity and fuel while they seek to shake the effects of decades of isolation under former leader Saddam Hussein and five years of war. AM(S) 1