Farming and Musaqat contracts as means of reviving abandoned agricultural lands*

The migration of labor, which once played a crucial role in supplying agricultural products from rural areas to cities, has caused a disruption in the balance of supply and demand for these products in Iraqi markets.As a result, Iraq, which was previously an exporter of these goods, has now become an importer due to the widespread nature of this phenomenon.This migration also led to the abandonment of fruit tree orchards and formerly cultivated lands used for seasonal crops.Consequently, the Iraqi economy has suffered, and unemployment has increased in the cities to which people migrated.To address this issue, there is a need to implement sharecropping and irrigation contracts, while also encouraging landowners to adopt these practices.This initiative aims to provide solutions to the problems of declining agricultural production and to increase output to a level that meets domestic market demand.Continued support is essential until Iraq can eventually return to exporting these agricultural products.