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We invite you to travel with us through the history of agriculture in Kurdistan and Iraq, through a geographical expanse that was once known as the fertile granary of the Mesopotamian region. Over the last century, this land has suffered from severe exploitation and mismanagement. Until today, Iraq’s agriculture continues to be impacted by past and current wars, climate change and resource misuse, toxicity released through oil fields, pesticides, the impact of dams built upstream, and drone attacks.
Once a rich agricultural land, Iraq has become a country dependent on food imports. In the 1920s and 1930s the British colonizers attempted to gain control over the country and exploit its oil resources. Heba, the widow in our first story, A Widow’s Tale, refuses to leave her land, sending her children up the river in boats during attacks to keep them safe.
Saddam Hussein (1979–2003) used agricultural policy to control the population. During the 1990s he drained the Mesopotamian marshes as a way to deliberately and systematically punish the population for their refusal to support the regime. In the second story, Living with the Water Buffalo, you will meet a family in the Marshlands in 1992.
The US war, the sanctions, and the oil for food programme after 2003 curtailed the development of a local agriculture. During the US invasion in 2003, the national seed bank in Abu Gharib, where 1,400 native seed varieties had been stored, was destroyed. Some of these seed varieties have since completely disappeared. This paved the way for multinational corporations to create hybrid seed markets that forced small-scale farmers into re-buying new seeds from them each season. This new seeds policy abolished the previous Iraqi law that had not allowed for any private ownership of biological resources. These new regulations aimed at substituting and destroying the informal seed exchange and seed saving methods of local farmers. At the same time, oil companies and other sectors disposed of contaminated waste into rivers, waters and agricultural areas with impunity. The third story, The Confession, is set during this period, between 2003 and 2011.
The last story, The Shepherd Activist, documents the life of farmers between 2019 and 2023, under the constant threat of bombings and the growing effects of dramatic climate change on their lands. The story is told through the eyes of 11-year-old Hakkar who, despite all these dangers, continues to tend to the land and care for the animals.
Although the political backgrounds and the repression of farmers in the four stories are sad and disturbing, their strength and love for the land are compelling.