Gov’t Buys 7% More Wheat From Local Farmers This Year

The Government Trading Corporation has bought 8.22 million tons of wheat worth 207.8 trillion rials ($755 million) from local farmers across the country in the current fiscal year (started March 20), which indicates a 7% increase compared with the similar period of last year.
Khuzestan with 1.2 million tons, Fars with 911,000 tons and Golestan with 820,000 tons topped the list of provinces from where the grain was bought.
GTC is the lever for enforcing market controls and in charge of maintaining a supply of wheat, rice, cooking oil and meat for the country’s strategic reserve of essential goods.
Close to 2 million hectares of wheat farms (one-third) in Iran are irrigated and 4.05 million hectares (two-thirds) are rain-fed, according to Esmaeil Esfandiyarpour, the official in charge of the “Wheat Project”—the government program to purchase the crop from farmers at a guaranteed price.