Damascus countryside-SANA
I harvest ears of wheat, then pile them up, thresh them, and separate their grains from the straws. With these words, Sameh Khraibeh, a farmer in the village of Al-Dirkhbeyeh in the town of Al-Kiswah in the countryside of Damascus, sums up his work during the harvest season, which he describes as hard because he spends more than five hours bent his back under the scorching sun.
The harvest season started a week ago, and although climatic changes have disappointed the farmers, the season is still good, according to the opinions monitored by SANA, despite the variation in production and crop quality from one land to another.
Ahmed Al-Ahmad, who works as a combine harvester driver, said: The production of the season is good this year, but it is not compared with the previous season, in which the sky was abundant with rain and the earth met it with generosity. However, the climatic changes that affected the country this year caused damage to the areas of rain-fed wheat in all the Kiswa villages, while the production of irrigated wheat good.
Ahmed, who begins his journey on his harvester from the early morning hours, shows that despite the bad weather conditions, the farmer arrives day and night to take care of his crop with great determination and will.
A colleague in the profession, Nidal Suwaid Abu Khaled, who has been working as a combine harvester driver for more than 15 years, explained that the current season is good, but it is not excellent due to the lack of rain and its interruption for long periods, drought, high temperatures and the lack of production requirements in the required quantities, which was confirmed by Khraibeh, who called for securing fertilizers and increasing quantities fuels.
Bassam Al-Fahad, owner of harvesters and studies, indicated that the lack of fuel led to an increase in harvest and study wages for this season.
The head of the Kiswa Department of Agriculture, Engineer Hisham Al-Sayyad, explained that the area of irrigated wheat planted for this season in the Kiswa area amounted to 2,200 hectares, and the cultivated area in the village of Al-Dirkhbeya is 500 hectares. However, the areas that reached the harvest stage did not exceed 1,800 hectares due to the lack of rain and the low level of groundwater in the area.
As for the delivery process between the fisherman, the wheat is delivered to the General Organization for Grain, where there is a center for receiving grain in the cladding, and the price of the wheat is delivered to the farmer from the Agricultural Bank within a maximum period of 48 hours.
Bushra Barhoum - Ghosoub Abboud