Agriculture in Iran
While one-third of Iran's total surface area is suitable for farming, due to poor soil and inadequate water distribution, most of it is not cultivated.
In addition to water scarcity and areas of poor soil, seed is of low quality and farming techniques are antiquated.
Further, after the 1979 revolution many agricultural workers claimed ownership rights and forcibly occupied large, privately owned farms where they had been employed.
Producers receive subsidised access to input costs such as fertiliser and pesticides, as well as a guaranteed support price for their crops.
In Northern Province, many indica rice cultivars including Tarom, Gerdeh, Hashemi, Hasani, Neda and Gharib have been bred by farmers.
Expansion of the fishery infrastructure would enable the country to harvest an estimated 700,000 tons of fish annually from the southern waters.
[34] Supervised by the Department of Natural Resources, the Caspian forests produced 820,000 cubic meters of timber products in 2004, more than 90 percent of which was for industrial use.
[34] The largest and most valuable woodland areas are in the Caspian region and the northern slopes of the Elburz Mts., where many of the forests are commercially exploitable and include both hardwoods and softwoods.
The mid fifth century BCE poet Cratinus (according to the later Greek author "Athenaeus") for example calls the chicken "the Persian alarm".
A boom in the production and export of cotton made Iran the richest region of the Islamic caliphate in the ninth and tenth centuries.
Yet in the eleventh century, because of colder temperatures, Iran's impressive agricultural economy entered a steep decline, bringing the country's primacy to an end.
The agricultural sector faces a number of challenges in Iran, the two most important being low rainfall and the impact of fluctuations in oil revenues.
Historically, in periods of high oil prices and the consequent petrodollar windfall, imports accelerate rapidly in virtually all consumption categories including agricultural products.
After the oil price spikes following 1973, agricultural imports also increased dramatically and caused significant damage to domestic production.
This experience was repeated in the past couple of years when oil prices were at or over $100 per barrel; the result is that agricultural imports have increased at a rapid pace and foreign products now form a sizeable chunk of the household consumption basket.
The government also pays a wide range of subsidies for improvements in production methods, the use of fertilisers and pesticides, and agricultural research.
In order to improve market efficiency and transparency, the Iranian government has allowed trading of agricultural products on the Iran Mercantile Exchange (IME) for the past seven years.
With an amazingly diverse climate, very high local and regional demand and an educated workforce of more than 100,000 in this field, Iran's agricultural sector is clearly underdeveloped and has immense potential for investment and growth.
According to a former agriculture minister, deserts in Iran are spreading, South Alborz and East Zagros will be uninhabitable and people will have to migrate.
Unresolved land reform issues, a lack of economic incentives to raise surplus crops, and low profit ratios combined to drive increasingly large segments of the farm population into urban areas.
The 1999-2000 drought reduced overall GDP by about 4.4%, and resulted in decreased non-oil exports, increased food imports, and a rise in inflation.
It accounts for almost 13% of Iran's GDP, 20% of the employed population, 23% of non-oil exports, 82% of domestically consumed foodstuffs and 90% of raw materials used in the food processing industry (2008).
[22] Major agricultural exports include fresh and dried fruits, nuts, animal hides, processed foods, caviar and spices.
[24] But according to the Central Bank of Iran, only 3.2 million tons of "agricultural products" were exported in 2008 with a total value of $3.2 billion "which showed a 6.1 percent increase over the previous year".
[67] Soft drinks, mineral water, biscuit, chocolate, confection, edible oil, dairies, conserved foods and fruits, jam and jelly, macaroni, fruit juice and yeast were among the main exports to Iraq, Afghanistan, Turkmenistan, Tajikistan and other Central Asian countries, Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Oman, Syria, Germany, Spain, the Netherlands, France, Canada, Venezuela, Japan, South Korea and Turkey.
[67][68] In theory, Iranian agricultural policy is intended to support farmers and encourage the production of strategically important crops.
[34] Because wheat is considered Iran's most strategically important crop, it received the largest subsidies, and its production grew at the fastest rate between 1990 and 2005.
The Codex Commission of Food Stuff, established in 2002 is in charge of setting and developing standards and quality and health regulations.
[72] In 2005, Iran's first genetically modified (GM) rice was approved by national authorities and is being grown commercially for human consumption.
[77] While current yields tend to be relatively stable, simulations done on the Mazandaran, Khuzestan, and Eastern Azerbaijan regions show how increasing temperatures and decreased precipitation could reduce output.
