Officials from the United Nations' Food and Agriculture Organization and Iran’s Forests, Range and Watershed Management Organization agreed to sign a memorandum of understanding on watershed management.
Iran and FAO will sign the MoU by the end of the current fiscal year (March 20,2019), Fars News Agency reported on Monday.
This was announced by Khalil Aqaei, the head of Forests, Range and Watershed Management Organization (FRWO), on the sidelines of a meeting with FAO's new representative to Iran, Gerold Boedeker.
Aqaei added that the MoU will be signed to enhance cooperation between Iran and FAO on risk management and the effectiveness of activities related to watershed management in Iran.
"The FAO office in Iran has agreed to provide financial and administrative support for this understanding," he said.
Iran joined FAO in 1953. FAO' office reopened in Tehran in 1992 after the 1979 Islamic Revolution.
The major thrust of FAO’s technical assistance to Iran has been in the areas of capacity building, policy and strategy development, crop production, livestock and animal health, fisheries and forest management, and, emergency and rehabilitation programs, as reported by FAO's official website.
In a related front in July 2017, the FAO voiced its readiness to participate in Urmia Lake Restoration Program.
FAO Chief Meeting With Iran's Agriculture Minister in Rome
FAO Director-General José Graziano da Silva in a meeting with Iran's Agricultural Minister Mahmoud Hojjati in Rome in May reiterated that his organization will do its best to help Iran revive Lake Urmia.
Graziano da Silva pointed to his organization’s partnership in the collaborative restoration program of Lake Urmia and expressed hope that the outcome will be positive.
FAO's director general also urged Iran to assist regional countries in the technical and research fields of agriculture, particularly in the fight against diseases and pests of palm dates.
Hojjati pointed to the 600% rise in the number and volume of credits of joint projects between Iran and FAO over the past last four years and said, "Iran has made outstanding achievements in the agriculture sector as its ratio of self-sufficiency has risen while the sector's trade deficit from minus $8 million in 2013 to minus $3 million in 2016."
Hojjati noted that 19 joint projects are being implemented with FAO in various sectors, including fisheries, oilseeds, forest, technology and veterinary.
FAO's Plant Breeding Approach in Iran
In its 2018 report of the State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World, FAO explains that an evolutionary-participatory plant breeding approach, specifically designed to be compatible with the local environment in Iran, has been successful in reducing vulnerabilities of small-scale farmers by improving crop yields as well as increasing crop resilience to drought and other stressful events.
Adapting this approach and expanding it to more farms in the country seems to be one of the ways for tackling the drastic water crisis and other stressful environmental events that Iran is susceptible to.
In Iran, planting a small number of improved crop varieties in place of several traditional varieties has resulted in the loss of genetic diversity in agricultural systems.
Thus, farmers need seeds that are better-adapted to increase climate variability and other climate shocks, reads FAO's report.
The Center for Sustainable Development, International Center for Agricultural Research in Dry Areas, Rice Research Institute of Iran, departments of agriculture in project provinces, farmers and farm associations, along with International Fund for Agricultural Development, introduced the concept of evolutionary-participatory plant breeding in Iran with the aim of increasing crop yields and resiliency using site-specific approaches.
In this approach, farmers used the best seeds from field trial plots combined with traditional varieties for the next planting season to create a mix of varieties that were highly regulated. After only one cultivation season, this approach yielded greater results than cultivating a single crop variety.
By growing this mixture of crop varieties, the crops became more climate-resilient, as the increased diversity of their genes allowed them to evolve and adapt to climate variability and unpredictable weather patterns.
FAO: Iran’s Cereal Output to Rise 12% in 2018
Despite autumn dryness, crop conditions recovered in Iran and the total cereal production for 2018 is forecast to stand at 20.1 million tons to register a 2.9% increase compared with the 2017 total of 19.6 million tons and 12% above the five-year average, FAO has forecast.
The figure for the country’s total grain production in 2016 stood at 17.8 million tons.
According to a FAO report released in September, Iran’s wheat production for 2018 is forecast to stand at 13.4 million tons, up from the 2017 estimated level of 12.5 million tons and the 2016 production of about 11.1 million tons.
Iran is the second biggest wheat producer in the Near East sub-region after Turkey.
Coarse grains production is forecast to reach 3.7 million tons this year, making Iran the second biggest producer of the crops in the Near East, again after Turkey. The estimated figure for 2017 and 2016 production amounted to 4 million tons and 3.8 million tons respectively.
Rice production is forecast to reach 3 million tons, 100,000 tons lower than the estimated production of last year. The figure amounted to 2.9 million tons in 2016, according to the report.
Iran is the biggest producer of rice in the sub-region, followed by Turkey and Afghanistan.
FAO also estimates that Iran’s cereal reserves will stand at 5.7 million tons in 2018, down from 8.4 million tons in 2017. The figure amounted to 10.4 million tons in 2016.
The country’s cereal stocks are forecast to further decline to 5.5 million tons in 2019.
