The Seeds that are a Sprouting: Food Sovereignty Insights from Iraqi Kurdistan

As the year ends, we stand in solidarity with people in Palestine, Lebanon and Syrian who have faced one of the hardest periods in their contemporary histories—facing atrocities, loss of thousands of lives, incarceration, psychological traumas, displacement and homelessness and now uncertainty. Communities in this part of the world are all too familiar with wars and their aftermath. Of being bombed, bruised, abused and forced to abandon their homes and fields and live through inhuman conditions and begin again. Despite the losses and atrocities of the past year and decades, people have to find strength to stand again, clean through the rubble, rebuild from scratch again, and plant seeds of hope. Amidst the smoke and ashes of lose and destruction, of hopelessness and despair, ordinary people have to pull up their sleeves, wipe their tears and labor collectively to begin living again, as generations before them have being doing.  We hope that in the coming year, resilient seeds of hope shall be sprouting anew everywhere to allow for regeneration and resilience.

Uncovering the Roots Our Shared Agricultural Heritage 

People in Kurdistan and Iraq, as their Palestinian, Lebanese and Syrian neighbors have also lived through multiple wars, ethnic cleansing campaigns, sanctions and countless atrocities and have remained resilient despite all the losses. Resilience has been our collective lifeline—passed down to us from our ancestors since millennia. Peoples’ resilience stem from their love for life and for their communities—fixed in traditions and practices that have deep roots in our lands. 

In the village of Bestansur in Iraqi Kurdistan, nine to eleven thousand years ago people strived collectively to sustain their communities by planting and saving ancient grain seeds in their fields and on the sides of the mountains. There, local archeologists and a UK time have found early evidences of agriculture.  Evidence of agriculture are found far and wide in Mesopotamia, as one of six areas in world known as the birthplaces of agriculture. Along with Bestansur, the village of Charmo, Qalati Saeed Ahmadian, and other sites in Iraqi Kurdistan are revered for their cultural and agricultural heritage. 

To examine the impacts of decades of interventions and trajectories of our communities’ agricultural practices and traditions, and in search of local seed varieties in Iraqi Kurdistan, in 2023, the Rosa Luxemburg-Beirut Office, in collaboration with the Kurdistan Institute in Slemani, begun the Oral History Study (OHS) that continues as I write. This interdisciplinary ethnographic study continues to document the rich heritage of farming communities in rural areas in the Sulaymaniyah Governorate. Informed by lifetime agricultural experiences and practices of farming women and men in rural areas in Kurdistan, our study offers primary knowledge about the regions’ traditional natural farming practices, testimonies of farmers, and seed saving practices and sustainable agrarian heritage of local communities. 

In addition, our small team of local researchers practice and advocate for sustainable clean agroecological methods and encourage local farmers to build on, and share their ancestors’ traditional agrarian heritage with local and international circles working on the topic of food sovereignty. Moreover, we work towards building connections between farming communities in different regions in the Slemani Governorate to enable discussions and build strong local networks of small-scale farmers, which in Kurdistan, like the rest of the world have been dwindling. 

Ethnography for Inclusion and Empowerment

Since the summer of 2023, the OHS has covered the regions of Sharbazher, Sharazur, Qaradagh, Panjween, Sargalw, Garmyan, Dukan and Qaladze, and the work continues. Along with recording the plethora of communal agrarian traditions and practices and vital testimonies of farmers, the objective of our research project has been to empower farmers and build wider awareness about their resilient knowledge and ecological farming methods. Fortunately, everywhere we travel during our field visits, generous farmers and their families and friends welcome us warmly, and as a result, we have established great rapport with them. Farmers in each of the communities we research, have generously opened their homes and hearts to us and share their stories openly without restrictions, and this in return have made us reflect critically about our research ethics and our roles and responsibilities towards them. 

Our responsibilities towards our research-communities and friends include, exchanging knowledge and expertise together and coming up with tangible and practical actions to address farmers’ needs. For the past two years, the RLS-Beirut Office with local support from the Kurdistan Institute have provided trainings, film screenings, panel discussions, seed exchanges, and a public festival to engage with farming communities in the Kurdistan Region, and enable critical discussions on the topic of food sovereignty. The result of two years of the Oral History research will be forthcoming in 2025 in two mediums, as a critical study and a short film. In the remaining sections, I provide short narratives and reflections from our fieldwork interviews with knowledgeable farming women and men whose stories remain understudied and undervalued. It is vital that we make these narratives accessible and include them into academic and educational circles.   

Stories from Resilient Farming Communities

For the past two years, we have had the privilege of visiting and interviewing farmers in many different communities, from the village of Shanakhse next to the Iranian border, to Hero Village in the Pshdar region. In each of the places that we have conducted fieldwork, we have learned valuable information about our past roots and traditions, as well as our present challenges and uncertainties. During our field research in the Garmyan Region this summer, a local guided us to a green haven in the dry and hot Kirkuk region, to Banimaqan—also known as Maqan.

 After the ethnics cleansing Anfal campaigns of the Ba’athist Regime in the 1980s, locals were forcefully relocated to government camps, where they survived for several years. Our host, Leyla, a hopeful female farmer and single mother, vividly recalled their time in the camp away from their “field and animals,” as the terrible times. Leyla then explained how in 1991, after the Kurdish uprising, they started anew:  

“When the Baathist army destroyed our village, we all fled. This area in Maqan was a forbidden military zone. No one could come near it without being shot at.  After 1991, my siblings and I, we are nine in total, came back here. There was no greenery here. We began planting all the trees you see now. We grow vegetables to feed ourselves… We do not depend on the government. We each now have our garden.” Interview conducted in July 2024 in Leyla’s priced vegetable garden. 

This oasis in the dry and hot Garmyan region is testament to one family’s resilience to rebuild an entire community of nearly 20 homes, fields and gardens, from the remains of a military compound that was built to destroy their culture and spirit. As one of the eldest members of her family, Leyla reminded her grown children, who listened behind our camera, while we recorded her personal testimonies, that she and her siblings toiled day and night to bring life back to the barren military zone. With a wide grin on her face, she told us that they were able to dig wells, plant trees, raise animals and grow food to feed themselves and share with others during the embargo period in the 1990s. Leyla’s perseverance and zest for life was remarkable, and on this hot summer day, our team returned to Slemani with a new spark of hope. We learned that not even the brutal Anfal Campaign could uproot resilience in this community. 

Feeding a Revolution 

In the Surdash region, we visited the beautiful village of Haladen, where Kurdish Komal, the leftist branch of the current Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, fought the Ba’athist regime in the mid-twentieth century. In a beautiful patch of field surrounded by multiple mountain chains, dotted with grape vine orchards, an elderly farmer and his wife shared personal stories about living and surviving during several challenging decades. On this hillside plantation filled with fruit trees, grape vines and clean rows of vegetation, Ahmed, an elderly farmer in his mid-eighties, refused to rest in bed due to complication in his kidneys, and with the help of his wife—he continued to produce an abundance of nutritional food, as his ancestors had done for eons. An animating storyteller, Ahmed patiently recalled many periods in his life from the latter period of the British monarchy when he was a young shepherd roaming the mountains, to the long years of Ba’athist administrations from 1963 to 1990, when Haladen and neighboring villages became central areas for the Kurdish revolutionaries, who were sheltered and fed by the villagers. Ahmed informed us: 

“We had everything in those periods. We grew everything and did not buy anything. We fed the Peshmerga fighters whenever they came. We fed them and cared for them. Sometimes dozens would come and stay in our home… After the chemical attack on our village, the government soldiers took us to Peramagroon camp. It was hard times.” Interview conducted on June, 2024 at Ahmed’s farm. 

Ahmed told us that his mother and wife and all the village women cooked and gave the best of what they had to the Kurdish revolutionaries. He insisted that without their agricultural produce and animal products, the fighters would not have been able to continue their revolutionary movement against the Iraqi government. Together with his wife, he recalled many stories about the hard times of war and relocation. No matter how many times I asked Ahmed to come to the point, he continued to elaborate on and asked me to wait and listen for more. In Haladen, we learned many lessons, including learning to be patient while listening to a wise elderly speaking. 

Ahmed had survived multiple military operations and attacks, including a chemical attack on his village, which killed both Peshmerga fighters and villagers. However, despite all the hardships, he and his wife found the strength to plant seeds and grow food again everywhere they were taken—around the camp where they were relocated, in exile in refugee camps in Iran, and on this new hill overlooking the village of Haladen, where he and his wife had built another beautiful oasis. Life for Ahmed and his wife was about producing one’s own nourishment from their own hands and of returning, staying steadfast and farming away even if your body was failing you. 

Women Farmers and Guardians of Traditions 

In breathtaking Dere village, in the Sharbazher region, we have had the pleasure of meeting farmer Abdulwahid, his wife Gulchin and their children Shara and Yusif, who collectively care for their fields. On a bright sunny day at the end of August 2024, Abdulwahid, Gulchin’s life long partner and companion, with a big grin on his face declared to me that without Gulchin, whom he called a shera zhin, a lioness of a woman, he and his family would not have been able to continue. Abdulwahid explained:

“Gulchin is a wife, mother, farmer, cook, an agricultural engineer—she knows everything about farming and I learn from her. She pushes me to continue every morning. She has kept us all going. Our women do everything with men.” Interview conducted in August 2024 in Dere Village. 

Abdulwahid, a prisoner of war during the Iraq-Iran War informed us about the important role women played in their village and his family. He referred to his wife, Gulchin, as a lioness due to her determination and bravery. He told us that in his six years of imprisonment during the 1980-1989 war, she cared for their children, fields, animals and the rest of their family. On the night of our interview in August, while Gulchin and I chopped a full container of freshly picked tomatoes from their garden, she spoke of the importance of producing their own food, instead of depending on the government. 

“I always tell my children about those years. I tell them to work hard and eat from our own fields. During the war, we had nothing to eat when we were in Slemani. We were away from our fields. We waited for the government rations to feed us. I pray we will never see those days again.”

Dere has become one of our main bases for the Oral History Study, where we continue to return for field interviews, and film screening and panel discussions, as we did during the RLS food sovereignty festival in April of 2024 with a team of local and transactional food sovereignty activists working together to strengthen the community. We have also recently began exchanging know how and heirloom seeds with farmers in Dere and shall continue to learn from each other. Dere is one of Kurdistan Region’s natural heavens where clean water from the mountains runs down through open fields, and old oak and walnut trees have been standing tall for hundreds of years. Farmers Abdulwahid and his wife and others in Dere are hopeful about continuing and protecting their clean agriculture heritage in order to be self-sufficient, as their ancestors were in the past. 

In this beautiful village, we have found life-long friends to whom we return on a regular basis, to learn from, to support, and help sustain this community of honest small-scale farmers to produce clean nutritional food. In Dere, we have learned that self-sufficiency meant that women and men had to combine their collective strengths together, from dusk to down, while working shoulder to shoulder to produce their own food. 

The Seeds that are a Sprouting: Hope and Resilience 

Despite all the dismal stories told about Iraqi Kurdistan and its unproductive agricultural system, our forthcoming study highlights the important role of communities of small-scale farmers and their ecological and oral traditions. There are many unexamined places and hundreds of untold stories from which we can learn and gather hope and solace. 

Our communities’ roots of resilience in Kurdistan and Iraq, and others regions in the Levant are old and strong, as are our agrarian heritage and seed varieties, from which new life has been sprouting for thousands of years. In these regions, many unexamined oral traditions and agrarian practices exist that we believe require serious attention and recognition. Where even during the hardest and most painful times, strong seeds of hope and resilience continue to sprout and nourish us.