New date palm commission launched

 

By Asmaa al-Khalidi

 

Azzaman, 2005-02-10

 

The cabinet has endorsed a proposal by the Agriculture Ministry to revive the country’s once flourishing date palm groves, the Agriculture Minister Susan Ali Majed has announced.

 

“It is the first time in Iraq’s history that a special agency specifically catering for date palm trees is being set up,” she said.

 

The ministry is seeking to restore the country’s standing as the world’s number one in number of date palm trees and date industries.

 

The decline in numbers started in the 1950s when extensive groves were lost to urbanization.

 

But the largest lost occurred in the three decades of the rule of the Baath party when huge concentrations with millions of trees were destroyed.

 

Iraq accounted for nearly two thirds of total world production before Saddam Hussein’s regime during which the number of date palms is believed to have plunged to 4 million from 14.

 

Agriculture Ministry says there has been a surge in planting date palm trees in the country in the nearly two years since Saddam Hussein’s down fall.

 

Though no figures are available, the minister said the country saw what she described as “the largest national campaign to plant date palm trees and breathe life into neglected groves.”

 

Half a century ago Iraq had 30 million date palm trees with most of them in the south.