Iran’s 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.
The Government Trading Corporation 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.
“Rain-fed wheat farms give the best grain yields compared to their irrigated counterpart.”
Some 14 million tons of the crop are estimated to have been produced in the last Iranian year (March 2019-20), of which only around 8.22 million tons were purchased by the government.
A total of 12.7 million tons of wheat were produced on 6.5 million hectares across the country in the fiscal 2018-19, according to a new report released by the Statistical Center of Iran.
The report noted that around 11,700 tons of the staple grain were imported during the period while exports hit 189,000 tons.
SCI put domestic demand for wheat at 10.4 million tons in the fiscal 2018-19.
The report also shows close to 1.5 million tons of wheat were used as animal feed that year.