Daraa-Sana
Karma farms are spread in different areas of Daraa Governorate, especially near dams, agricultural irrigation networks, water springs, and artesian wells.
The lands of Daraa are characterized by the production of export grape varieties of the types of Al-Halwani, Al-Baladi, and others. To maintain this production, its farmers demand, at the beginning of the entry of their crop to the market, to reduce the prices of fertilizers and pesticides, and to secure diesel for irrigation and agricultural wells needs to continue achieving good production of this substance.
Head of the Plant Production Department in Daraa Agriculture Directorate, Eng. Wael Al-Ahmad, said in a statement to SANA reporter that the directorate estimated farmers’ production of vine in the current season at about 11384 tons of fruits, indicating that the area planted with vine trees is 539 hectares, including about 356 thousand trees in the process of production.
Al-Ahmad explained that all vineyards are irrigated and spread in the first and second settlement areas, where the appropriate conditions are available for their cultivation, indicating that production estimates have decreased compared to the past seasons due to the difficulties farmers faced, including the high production costs of fertilizers, pesticides, irrigation and others.
Head of the Agricultural Extension Department in the Directorate of Agriculture, Eng. Muhammad Al-Shahadat, spoke in a similar statement about the procedures followed by the department to protect the grape crop in terms of integrated pest management and implementation of extension activities for this purpose.
Al-Shahadat attributed the decline in the area planted with vine during the war years in general to reasons related to the difficulty of accessing farms in some areas, the high cost of farm rehabilitation, transportation and marketing costs, labor wages, packing boxes prices, and others, noting at the same time that farmers are doing their best to restore the distinguished production of this substance in Preservation as before.
The farmer Hussein Al-Rasheed explained that the juicy grape affected the cultivation of the rest of the species and became more popular with farmers because it does not need services, fertilizers and pesticides like others.
The directorate estimated the farmers' production last season at 12800 tons.
Qasim Miqdad
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