A recent report has revealed that within the framework of its food security policy, Iran is meeting 85% of its food needs.
The report, issued on Wednesday by ISNA news agency, came on the World Food Day.
The World food day is celebrated every year worldwide on October 16 to commemorate the date of the founding of the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization in 1945.
In early 2020, Abbas Keshavarz, the then caretaker minister of Agricultural Jihad said that Iran had manage to increase Iran’s food security to 80% from 55% seven years ago despite all the pressures from climate change, water crisis and so on.
He added that Iran planned to further increase the country’s self-sufficiency in food production to 85% within a year.
Earlier this month, Sohrab Sohrabi, a senior official with the Ministry of Agricultural Jihad, said that Iran is importing no wheat three years after it used to import 7 million tons of the crop.
He added that Iran’s self-sufficiency in wheat production had been a result of balanced use of pesticides, promotion of modern irrigation systems, increased use of genetically modified seeds and increasing the area under mechanized cultivation.
The official had also said in September that Iran will need no more rice imports in the current calendar year to March 2025.
Sohrabi noted that as much as 2.7 million tons of rice was expected to be harvested by Iranian farmers in this crop year.
Some 491,000 tons of rice has been imported into the country since the beginning of the current calendar year (March 21, 2024) and at least 100,000 tons of the crop produced domestically last year remain in the warehouses, the official said, noting that there will be no more need for rice imports in the rest of the year.
He said that Iran’s seventh five-year development plan has targeted a 90% self-sufficiency in rice cultivation.