Iran’s Deputy Minister of Agriculture Saeed Rad said on Wednesday that the country’s wheat imports over the first nine months of the current Iranian calendar year (March 21 – December 21) has declined by some 2 million tons year-on-year.
He said that Iran imported around 3.241 million tons of wheat in the nine-month period while the country’s imports of the crop stood at some 5.029 million tons in the corresponding period of the preceding year.
Noting that Iran is moving in the path of self-sufficiency in wheat production, the official said that in spite of widespread drought across the country, the government managed to sell as much as 7.2 million tons of wheat from domestic farmers this year.
He added that the figure stood at 4.7 million tons a year ago.
The official also said that the Iranian government under President Ebrahim Raeisi offered incentive packages to encourage domestic production of wheat which included a 130% rise in governmental selling prices as well as a 50% cut in the price of agricultural inputs.
Manager of the Agriculture Ministry’s “Wheat Project” Sohrab Sohrabi had said last month that a total of 11.5 million tons of wheat were produced on 4.9 million hectares of farms across Iran during the last crop year (September 2021-22).
He said that the figure registered a 45% rise compared with the previous year.