TEHRAN (Iran News) – Nearly 14,000 hectares of agricultural lands in arid plains in Iran’s Sistan region have started using irrigation thanks to a government project which seeks to eliminate poverty and boost jobs in the underprivileged region.
Iranian President Hassan Rouhani ordered the rollout of the project on Thursday using a video conference call from his office in Tehran.
The lands located near the border with Pakistan in southeastern Iran are spread across 729 villages mostly in Zabol County in the province of Sistan and Baluchestan.
Agriculture minister Kazem Khavazi said that irrigation project would boost food security in Iran’s largest but poorest province.
Rouhani ordered the launch of over 4,600 agricultural projects on Thursday as part of his weekly inauguration campaigns.
His website said the projects had cost over 81 trillion rials (over $338 million) in spending, adding that they would create a total of 42,300 new jobs across the country.
The projects included nearly 4,000 drip irrigation systems, some 571 livestock and poultry units as well as a total of 150 fishery and aquaculture projects.
Khavazi said drip irrigation systems is now installed at nearly 2.5 million hectares of farming lands across Iran, almost double the area reported in 2013.
He said Iran had also reached a point of full self-sufficiency in manufacturing parts and components of irrigation systems inside the country.
On fisheries and aquaculture, the minister said output in the sector had seen a four-fold increase in eight years to 49,000 metric tons a year, adding that Iran is currently earning nearly $0.5 billion a year from fisheries exports.
Khavazi said Iran is now a net exporter of butter, a product for which the country used to spend big for 50,000 tons of imports each year.
