Farming abroad: a solution to manage water consumtion

Iran Newspaper reports Mahmoud Hojjati, Minister of Agriculture as saying that Iran has one million hectares of land under farming in other countries. Negotiations are underway to increase this to 2.5 million hectares. Due to water shortage problems, the Ministry is seeking to set the legal and technical infrastructure in the target countries in order to ease investment by the private sector. In some countries, the cost of renting each hectare of fertile land is between 20 to 100 dollars annually. While the cost of land in Iran is estimated at 3.5 to 7 million tomans. The Director of Foreign Affairs at the Ministry of Agriculture, Human Fathi has said that the 6000 hectares of land received in Ghana, with an average downpour of 900 mm per year, is so fertile as to allow for some produce to be planted twice per year. Countries such as Turkmenistan, Azerbaijan, Armenia, South Africa, Uganda, Ghana, Kenya, Afghanistan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, Ukraine, Belarus, Syria, Kazakhstan, Brazil, Venezuela, Iraq, Georgia, Moldavia, Vietnam and Macedonia have been introduced as target countries.