TEHRAN – Cereal production in Iran is expected to grow 34.2 percent in 2022, while the imports of such products are seen to drop 25 percent, according to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO)’s latest Food Outlook report released last week.

Based on the said report, the Islamic Republic is expected to produce 19.2 million tons of cereals in 2022, 4.9 million tons more than the figure for the previous year in which the total production stood at 14.3 million tons.

With the increase in Iran's cereal production, the import of such products will decrease by 25 percent, the report said noting that the country’s cereal imports will drop to 16.2 million tons from the previous year’s 21.6 million tons.

Iran's cereal exports are projected at 100,000 tons this year, which is not significant and will not change compared to 2021.

FAO sees Iran's wheat production to increase by four million tons (over 44 percent) this year to 13 million tons. Last year, Iran produced only nine million tons of wheat due to drought.

Accordingly, Iran's wheat imports will be less than half this year, and while Iran imported 7.9 million tons of wheat last year, this figure will be reduced to 3.4 million tons this year.

The country’s maize production is expected to stay stable this year and will remain at 1.3 million tons. Iran's corn imports are seen at nine million tons unchanged from the previous year.

FAO has further predicted that Iran's meat production will reach 3.556 million tons in 2022, which will be slightly lower than the last year’s production which was 3.086 million tons.

Iran is expected to import 121,000 tons of meat this year and export 30,000 tons of the product.

Back in May, FAO had released a report in which Iran was ranked 43rd in the world in terms of food imports despite being the 17th most populous country in the world.

Based on the FAO data, the Islamic Republic of Iran imported only $8.3 billion worth of food products in 2020, indicating that Iran is self-reliant in terms of agricultural and food products.

FAO statistics show that industrialized countries were the largest importers of food products in the world.  

According to FAO, Iran currently stands among the world’s top producers of agricultural products.

EF/MA