Farmers in the villages of Kobani complain about the lack in the number of agricultural harvesters

Farmers in the villages of Kobani / Ain Al-Arab complain about the lack in the number of agricultural harvesters in comparison with the previous years, which led to a serious damage to their agricultural crops, especially the barley crop, which its grain began to fall, due to the delay in harvesting, in addition to the burning of thousands of dunums of agricultural land in the area.

Most of the agricultural harvesters headed to the countryside of Raqqa, Deir Ez-Zour and Al-Hasaka, where their agricultural crops  have grown about 10 days before the ones of Kobani.

 “The farmers are in an urgent need of the harvesters,” mentioning that the Economic Commission allowed the harvesters’ owners to leave the area by distributing the fuel to them without signing pledges to remain in the region,” Khalid Muhammad Wali, 47-year-old, a farmer from Beer Aloos village, west of Kobani, told North Press.

The Economic Commission and the Directorate of Fuel in Kobani stopped the distribution of fuel to farmers, and distributed to the owner of harvesters to harvest lands in their region, and the owners of the harvesters received 3,000 liters of diesel, and they did not commit to stay in the area, and they headed towards the eastern region (the countryside of Raqqa, Deir Ez-Zour, and Al-Hasaka), leaving the farmers in Kobani without harvesters.

Wali pointed that the agricultural crop is good compared to the previous years, and that production would improve the living condition of people, but the fires and the delay in harvesting prevented that.

Wali says, “Thousands of hectares of agricultural lands in the western villages (Derbazin, Talek, Darb Al-Nub and Horan) have only one or two harvesters, and it breaks down many times a day,” noting that the Self- Administration is responsible of this”. 

Shaheen Hassan Al-Ali, 52-year-old, from Derbazin Horan village, the west of Kobani said that farmers wait for their land to be harvested so they can sell the production of crop.

Furthermore, Al-Ali said, that they were looking for harvesters for their agricultural lands, but all was in vain, for there are only three or four harvesters in all over the western villages, so the Administration had to prevent the harvesters’ owners from leaving the region.

” If the indicated percentage set by the Self-Administration of the crop production is not suitable for the owners of harvesters, they should demand a higher percentage, and the farmers would have agreed, no matter what the percentage was in the shade of the lack of harvesters, however, the farmer face injustice, and do not know what to do, and how they will bring over harvesters to benefit from the production of their land,” he pointed out.

About 8 hectares of wheat and barley crops were burned during the past few days in Darbzsin Horan village, the villagers used tractors to extinguish the fire, in time of the lacking of  firehouses  in the western villages, where the firefighters usually arrive too late, because they are busy with selling drinking water to people and are not ready to intervene in case of fire, according to the residents. 

Moreover, the total number of the harvesters registered by the Commission of Economic this year, was 642, and in different sizes. The Commission, in cooperation with the Directorate of Fuel “Sadcop” distributed 3,000 liters per harvester, before the beginning of the agricultural season.

Furthermore, a spokesman of the Commission of Economic in Kobani, Khalil Sheikh Muslim, cleared that the Commission distributed fuel to the owners of harvesters early, to be able to harvest land in Kobani, in the shade of good production and crop, mentioning that the owners of the agricultural lands were wronged.

 

It is noteworthy that the Committee of Economy issued a circular in which the prices of harvesters in the Euphrates region is 7% for rain-fed barley, 8% for irrigated barley, while the price of wheat is 5%, whether it is rain-fed or irrigated, but the owners of the harvesters do not comply with the prices, in light of the lack of harvesters and the farmers’ need for them.