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WEEKLY NEWSLETTER
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Iraq
Index
Since the beginning of recorded time, agriculture has been
the primary economic activity of the people of Iraq. In 1976,
agriculture contributed about 8 percent of Iraq's total GDP, and
it employed more than half the total labor force. In 1986,
despite a ten-year Iraqi investment in agricultural development
that totaled more than US$4 billion, the sector still accounted
for only 7.5 percent of total GDP, a figure that was predicted to
decline. In 1986 agriculture continued to employ a significant
portion--about 30 percent--of Iraq's total labor force. Part of
the reason the agricultural share of GDP remained small was that
the sector was overwhelmed by expansion of the oil sector, which
boosted total GDP.
Large year-to-year fluctuations in Iraqi harvests, caused by
variability in the amount of rainfall, made estimates of average
production problematic, but statistics indicated that the
production levels for key grain crops remained approximately
stable from the 1960s through the 1980s, with yield increasing
while total cultivated area declined. Increasing Iraqi food
imports were indicative of agricultural stagnation. In the late
1950s, Iraq was self-sufficient in agricultural production, but
in the 1960s it imported about 15 percent of its food supplies,
and by the 1970s it imported about 33 percent of its food. By the
early 1980s, food imports accounted for about 15 percent of total
imports, and in 1984, according to Iraqi statistics, food imports
comprised about 22 percent of total imports. Many experts
expressed the opinion that Iraq had the potential for substantial
agricultural growth, but restrictions on water supplies, caused
by Syrian and Turkish dam building on the Tigris and Euphrates
rivers, might limit this expansion.
Data as of May 1988
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