TEHRAN- As announced by a provincial official, 1,314 hectares of lands in Mazandaran province, in the north of Iran, are under greenhouse cultivation.

Ehsan Abbaspour, the deputy head of the province’s agriculture department for plant production improvement, also said that the area under greenhouse cultivation in the province will be expanded to 5,000 hectares by the next three years.

He said, “Five greenhouse states were built in Mazandaran, and we hope that this process will continue.”

As stated by the deputy agriculture minister, the development of greenhouse cultivation is a major policy of the Agriculture Ministry.

In this regard, several projects have been defined and introduced to the banks, and as soon as the notification is made, the projects will receive facilities and their implementation will begin, the official added.

In recent years, the water crisis has caused serious challenges in Iran’s agriculture sector.

To solve this problem, several solutions, including the implementation of pressurized irrigation project and greenhouse cultivation, have been emphasized by experts and officials in this sector.

Iranian Agriculture Ministry’s Greenhouse Development Program is one of the priority projects of this 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 20, 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 preserve the environment and the national water and soil resources.

MA