Rice returns to Diyala for the first time since 1997

DIYALA — Farmers in Diyala have planted rice for the first time since 1997, sowing Iraqi Anbar seed brought from Najaf’s Mishkhab district as this year’s water recovery revives a crop the governorate abandoned nearly three decades ago.

Fields have reappeared in Baladruz, Muqdadiyah, Khalis and Adhaim. In Tawakkul village in Muqdadiyah, farmers have planted 100 dunams with Mishkhab seed and are trying modern irrigation rather than the traditional flooding that rice normally requires.

Saleh Khawam, a farmer and landowner there, said his family last grew rice in 1997, and that the land around the village lay uncultivated from 2014 to 2024, with homes abandoned or damaged before people gradually returned. Planting rice on modern irrigation is a gamble given how much water the crop needs, he said, though germination has reached 100% and the yield will not be known until harvest. This season’s crop could also supply local seed next year, cutting dependence on the south.

Khawam recalled Baladruz’s reputation for rice in the 1990s, when the scent of ripening Anbar rice carried across the fields at night as temperatures fell and humidity rose. He said Diyala’s soil and fresh water could let its crop match southern rice on grain quality, flavour and aroma.

Ibrahim al-Jubouri, another farmer, said he returned to rice after about 20 years because the water was there this season. He planted Mishkhab Anbar and said the crop needs constant attention to irrigation throughout its growth.

Mishkhab itself has been reviving. Cultivation there fell from about 35,000 dunams in 2010 to 466 in 2022 under water restrictions, with only about 200 dunams planted at a research station last year. Rainfall and snow in the 2025-26 season, after Iraq’s driest year in roughly eight decades, added about 6 billion cubic meters to reserves by April, and national storage reached about 34 billion by August. Some Najaf farmers have still reported local shortages and protested over distribution, and some have moved to jasmine rice, which needs less water than traditional Anbar.