TEHRAN- As announced by a provincial official, 207 greenhouses are active in West Azarbaijan province in northwest of Iran.

Jafar Vahdat, the acting deputy head of the province’s Agriculture Department, said that these units are active in 60 hectares of land.

The official said that besides cultivating agricultural products, some medical herbs are also cultivated in these greenhouses.

Earlier this month, an official with Agriculture Ministry announced that the ministry plans to construct 3,052 hectares of new greenhouses in 10 different provinces across the country in the current Iranian calendar year (started on March 21).

Darioush Salempour, the director of the Agriculture Ministry’s Greenhouse Development Program, said these greenhouses will be built in provinces that are suitable in terms of climate, infrastructure, proximity to target markets, and access to manpower such as Sistan-Baluchestan, Hormozgan, Kerman, Bushehr, Fars, Isfahan, Khorasan Razavi, Tehran, East Azerbaijan, and Ardebil.

According to Salempour, over 30 trillion rials of facilities (about $714 million) was paid for the construction of greenhouses across the country in the previous Iranian calendar year.

He stated that last year 45 percent of the greenhouses constructed in the country were funded by private sector investors, adding that this year the National Development Fund (NDF) and the country’s banking system will provide low-interest facilities to applicants in low-income regions for the construction of greenhouses.

The official also mentioned the ministry’s plans for the modernization and renovation of the country’s traditional and old greenhouses, saying: “Our plan in the 10-year horizon is to improve and renovate more than 5,000 traditional, wooden and worn-out greenhouses across the country.”

“We have planned to renovate about 650 to 700 hectares of traditional and worn-out greenhouses each year,” he added.

The Agriculture Ministry’s Greenhouse Development Program is one of the priority projects of the mentioned ministry which aims at increasing productivity, efficiency, and water consumption management in the agriculture sector; the program was approved in the Iranian calendar year 1395 (ended on March 21, 2017) under the framework of the National Resilient Economy Plan.

The development of the country’s agricultural parks and greenhouses not only is going to create new job opportunities but also increases the country’s non-oil exports and helps to preserve the environment and the national water and soil resources.

MA/MA