News on Potato Trade from Iraq

Mr. Shaban Al-Nahar, Chairman of Beirut Erbil Company, visited the Dutch Consulate in Erbil to welcome Consul Adriaan IJsselstein. They discussed strengthening Iraq-Netherlands cooperation, focusing on advancing the potato sector with Dutch expertise.

Following a satisfactory experience with exporting potatoes to the United Arab Emirates in recent weeks, several other Gulf states are now lining up to buy the starchy vegetable produced from the farms of the Kurdistan Region

Potato production in Kurdistan has seen a 13-fold increase over the last 7 years and is well above domestic demand, allowing export of the surplus. Nevertheless, potatoes have to be imported later in the season, since local potato storage capacity is lacking.

Bernard Quere, the Middle East envoy for the French agricultural agency France Obtention- whose slogan is L'Univers de la pomme de terre - had flown from Paris in November to sell seedlings cultivated by French farmers to Kurdish agriculturalists. By ...