Kurdish Iraqi farmer Azad Muhammad has become a social media star by sharing tips on growing fresh fruits and vegetables in a sun-scorched country that is highly vulnerable to climate change. The 50-year-old mustache man with nearly half a million Facebook followers posts weekly videos on topics such as protecting fruit trees, dealing with insects, and helping people get more out of their fields and gardens. “He should make you the agriculture minister,” one of his admirers, Ahmed Hassan, commented on a recent video.
Muhammad also uses his popular online platform to raise awareness about protecting the environment and the need to support local farmers in his native Kurdistan region and beyond.
“Farmers in developed countries have government support and harvesting machines,” Muhammad said.
“Our farmers do everything themselves with their own sweat – and when they lose money at the end of the year, they start over with the same passion and energy.”
He also has a message for officials in Iraq, which the United Nations classifies as the world’s fifth most vulnerable country to climate change and where many remain mired in poverty despite Iraq’s oil wealth.
“Our land is fertile, and our land is like gold,” Muhammad told AFP.
Therefore, he said, the government should “focus on agriculture rather than oil for a sustainable economy”.
protect the environment
From his farm near Halabja, Muhammad sits among grape vines and other plants, wearing traditional Kurdish clothes as a friend uses a mobile phone to film him.
Many of his followers, he said, are not farmers but people who have “turned their terrace into gardens – and that’s a way to better preserve the environment”.
He invites his Facebook followers to post their questions, saying that some farmers have sent him videos of their harvest, thanks for their help.
“It makes me very happy,” he said.
In a video, he advises farmers to space their trees just two meters (six feet) apart instead of four, to keep the soil shady and moist, to protect it from the scorching heat.
“With desertification, and less rainfall, we have to change how we plant trees,” he said.
“Look at these tomatoes,” he said, pointing to a group of plants. “Because they’re in the shade, they’re juicy and perfect—while those in direct sunlight tend to burn.”
Iraq’s northern Kurdistan region has been spared the worst effects of desertification, water scarcity and drought that have ravaged other parts of the country.
“The region receives more rainfall than the rest of Iraq,” said a 2019 study involving UN agencies and the Autonomous Kurdistan Regional Government.
But the report warns that “local agricultural production is in severe competition with foreign goods with largely low prices” … “mainly from Turkey and Iran, whose products have flooded Iraqi markets.” “.
It urged “more investment” in improving irrigation as well as water management to ensure efficient use of resources and promote sustainability to “mitigate the effects of climate change”.
fresh and organic
Hamid Ismail Abdulrahman, a fellow farmer from Halabja, said the low water level in the wells had affected agricultural development.
Twice a week, the 47-year-old opens his farm to families who can buy “fresh and organic produce” from tomatoes to corn and eggplant.
He added that climate change has greatly affected agriculture throughout Iraq, although “southern Iraq has the lion’s share of this effect, while the north has less of an impact”.
With record low rainfall and high temperatures in Iraq in recent years, Muhammad warned that “if the government does not act now and present a concrete plan … there will be damage”.
Muhammad has recently opened a small educational area on his farm, and now receives visits from university students as well.
He says he hopes his initiative will have a long-term impact.
“Some people leave a mosque” when they die, he said, but “I want to leave my agricultural knowledge behind.”
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