Iraq, a major Middle East grain importer, said on Tuesday it sees local wheat production for the 2018-2019 season reaching almost 3 million tonnes due to higher rainfall. The total area of wheat planted using irrigation methods has shrunk from one million hectares in the 2017-2018 season to 550,000 hectares this season, but better rainfall will up the crop from the 2.17 million tonnes produced in 2018, Mahdy al-Jabouri, an undersecretary at the ministry, told Reuters.

"The size of production for this season we expect will cover 60 percent of the needs of the food rationing programme that requires 4.5 million to 5 million tonnes of wheat annually," he said. Jabouri said better weather in Nineveh, Iraq's former breadbasket, meant more wheat was planted this season than last year, yet added it was too early to give an estimate for production of the grain out of that province.

An investigation by Reuters in July showed how Nineveh was becoming a dust bowl after drought and years of war. When rains failed Nineveh last season, the government procured only a little over 100,000 tonnes of wheat from a region that used to produce close to one million tonnes annually before Islamic State took over in 2014.

Copyright Reuters, 2019