The Tiziano Project just wrapped up a 2-month workshop in Erbil training local journalists in New Media skills. I learned about their project just after I left Erbil, but spoke with them when I was in Baghdad to see if any of their students might want to produce pieces on agriculture for The Iraqi Seed Project. Below is a video on grain harvest in Erbil by Zana Mamundy, you can follow his website here. Please be sure to check out the rest of the pieces from The Tiziano Project’s workshop. They are doing excellent and exciting work.
On our filming trip in June it became evident that agricultural life in Northern Iraq (Iraqi Kurdistan) is completely distinct from the rest of the country. There are a few reasons for this, but the security situation is an obvious place to start. Because the Kurdish region has been semi-autonomous since the 1990s, they have a head start on the rest of the country in terms of reconstruction, they have also not had to deal with issues of sectarian violence to the same degree that other areas of the country have. As a result what we found in Erbil and Sulaimaniyah was something of an agricultural boom. The Kurdish region has always been one of the major food producing areas for the whole country. While farmers and agricultural advisers in the rest of Iraq are talking about rebuilding irrigation systems and getting farmers to move back to their land, the Kurdish Ministry of Agriculture is implementing a plan for the region to be entirely self-sufficient in food production by 2012, though ambitious this goal does not seem remotely unrealistic.
For all of these reasons we are launching Seeds of Kurdistan, a sister site to The Iraqi Seed Project that will highlight agriculture in the Kurdistan region. Once our library on this site is built, we will cross-post the content, but for now enjoy exploring the wonderful world of agriculture in Iraqi Kurdistan on its very own website: http://seedsofkurdistan.tumblr.com/
KISTUKAL means agriculture in Kurdish, it is also the name of a popular satellite television show that airs weekly on Zagros TV. The show’s target audience is farmers in the Kurdish region and its purpose is to educate farmers by showing the work of other farmers. Each 22 minute episode is divided into three segments, topics are diverse– anything from beekeeping, to the wheat harvest, to plowing, to removing rocks from hillside farmland.
We spent the weekend with Mr. Azad- the show’s host, and Mr. Handren- the camera man and editor. They took us to see Erbil’s grain silo, and visit several farms as they harvested their wheat.
Me, Alexi and Mr. Azad - Filming the wheat harvest outside of Erbil - Photo thanks to Mr. Handren
Close up of harvested and unharvested wheat fields.
Trucks waiting to deliver harvested wheat to the silo-- they say the wait can last 7 days
