The seasonal ban imposed on rice imports will be lifted in the current Iranian year (started March 21) as per the decision of Market Regulation Headquarters affiliated with the Ministry of Industries, Mining and Trade.
The headquarters took the decision after taking into account this year’s estimated domestic production, imports and market conditions, Mehr News Agency reported on Tuesday.
The Market Regulation Headquarters has announced that the measure will be taken to ensure the country’s demand for the staple grain is met.
Secretary of the headquarters addressed a letter to the Islamic Republic of Iran Customs Administration’s Import and Export Affairs Bureau on Tuesday ordering the clearance of rice consignments that have entered the customs terminals by June 21, adding that the measure has to be taken in these “sensitive” times of water shortage to ensure the country’s food security.
Every year and during the rice harvest season, the government bans rice imports in support of local farmers and domestic production. The ban usually begins in August and lasts until November.
“A total of 2.6 million tons of rice were produced on more than 800,000 hectares of paddy fields across the country last year (2020-21), showing a 10.34% decline compared with the output of the year before,” Faramak Aziz Karimi, the Agriculture Ministry’s director general of Grains and Essential Goods Affairs Department, told IRNA.
The official noted that over 73% of the country’s rice cultivation took place in the three northern provinces of Gilan (32%) and Mazandaran (26%) and Golestan (15%) and 18% in the southern province of Khuzestan, adding that the staple grain was also cultivated in 15 other provinces, which together accounted for 8% of the annual harvest.
Agricultural and environmental experts have been urging the government for years to restrict rice farming to the water-rich provinces of Gilan and Mazandaran, which are home to a majority of Iran’s paddy fields, and to ban the cultivation of the staple in other parts of the country.
Apart from the three northern provinces, rice is currently cultivated in Khuzestan, Isfahan, Fars, Kohgilouyeh-Boyerahmad, Chaharmahal-Bakhtiari, Ilam, Qazvin, Lorestan, Zanjan, Sistan-Baluchestan, Kurdestan, Ardabil, East Azarbaijan and North Khorasan provinces. This is while most of these provinces are facing an acute water shortage.
The water crisis in Iran has exacerbated to such an extent that agricultural officials have expressed concerns regarding rice farming even in northern Iran where precipitation levels are relatively higher.
Rice is a staple food in Iran. Iranians consume around 3.2 million tons of rice a year. The difference between domestic production and local need is imported from the UAE, India, Pakistan, Thailand, Turkey and Iraq.
Rice imports stood at 182,000 tons worth $163 million in first two months of the current Iranian year, registering a 31% and 34% year-on-year growth in weight and value respectively, according to the Islamic Republic of Customs Administration.
In the same period of last year, rice imports stood at 139,000 tons worth $122 million.
Drought has inflicted losses worth 670 trillion rials ($2.68 billion) on Iran’s agriculture sector since the beginning of the current crop year.
