Iran, formerly a major wheat importer, on Tuesday celebrated self-sufficiency in the grain, marking the first time in 40 years it would not need imports. Iran's Agriculture Ministry said it expected production to reach 11.38 million tonnes in the year to March 2005, satisfying domestic consumption of 11.04 million tonnes. "Wheat has a security significance next to its economic importance...it's even a political tool," President Mohammad Khatami was quoted as saying at the celebration by the official IRNA news agency.
"Ninety percent of the world's 600 million tonnes of wheat production is in the hands of five western powers," he added.
Iranian officials say production was increased by improving farming methods, but critics said it was thanks to the end of a drought and sacrificing barley cultivation.
"We have relied on boosting productivity in the last two years," Mohammad Reza Eskandari, the Agriculture Ministry's wheat project manager, told state television.
Production increased 9.4 percent last year. But Iran's former Agriculture Minister Isah Kalantari believed the current increase was a sham and would not prove sustainable, the Sharq daily wrote.
"The government has paid two trillion tomans ($2.2 billion) in subsidies for wheat," Kalantari noted, saying a higher price set by state for purchase of wheat from farmers fuelled the increase.
Kalantari said that some farmers had replaced barley cultivation with wheat leading to the import of two million tonnes of barley.
"This is while we had a peak in rainfall this year, some 240 mm (9.5 in)," he continued.
"We can stop cotton and produce wheat, but is this economical?" Kalantari continued.
The country's Management and Planning Organisation said Iran could for the first time export 400,000 tonnes of wheat in the year to March 2006.
Iran, formerly a big importer of the grain from Canada, Australia and Argentina, plans to boost wheat production to more than 16 million tonnes a year within a decade.