Iraqi farmers cling to sidr trees amid water crisis
STORY: This is Ismail Ibrahim’s farmland, just outside of Basra, in southeastern Iraq.
He used to grow date palms, but faced with a failing business due to scarce resources, he decided to plant "sidr", or jujube.
Ibrahim says unlike date palms, the evergreen fruit trees require significantly less water during an irrigation crisis and can rely on salty groundwater.
The financial return is also better with sidr trees.
He says sidr bears fruit from their second year, unlike palms that take at least five.
Iraq is part of the so called "Fertile Crescent" of arable land that sweeps from the Mediterranean to the Gulf which has been farmed for thousands of years.
But the landscape has been devastated by upstream damming of the main two rivers, the Tigris and the Euphrates.
What’s more, lower rainfall trends and decades of armed conflict have left farmers clinging to their livelihoods.
Iraq has been trying to emerge from decades of conflicts ranging from former President Saddam Hussein's invasion of Kuwait in 1990 to the 2003 U.S.-led invasion that toppled him to the violence wreaked by Islamic State militants who took over large swathes of the country, destroying its economy.
Today's water shortage is the latest blow for many farmers.
After years of investment in his palm farm, Abbas Ali says he is just coming to grips with the grim reality that his produce has also fallen victim to the high percentage of salt in the water.
“The high percentage of salt continuously pollutes the soil, it cannot be disposed of easily because if the salt tide comes, you cannot get rid of it in an instant. It takes a long time for the earth to get rid of the salt present in it. This affects the productivity of the palm tree, the shape of the palm tree, the quality of the fruits. It also affects the quality and quantity of the produce."
