ASHGABAT: Turkmenistan's eccentric and authoritarian leader Gurbanguly Berdymukhamedov has penned a poem celebrating wheat and the farmers that grow it, state media in the Central Asian country reported Tuesday.

Berdymukhamedov is portrayed by local media as a prolific author, poet and composer, while reverence for wheat is a tradition deeply rooted in the Soviet Union that oil-rich Turkmenistan separated from in 1991. The poem published in the state newspaper Neutral Turkmenistan hailed wheat as a "wonderful cereal, miracle seed."

"I wish success to the farmer, the whole world warms itself with wheat," read the poem attributed to Berdymukhamedov. In a report shown on tightly controlled state television, Berdymukhamedov said that the verses had been inspired by the sight of "fields of waving wheat" during his recent working trips through the country.