Minister: Expanding modern irrigation should be one of main priorities

Expansion of modern irrigation should be one of the main priorities in Azerbaijan.

Report informs that Agriculture Minister Majnun Mammadov said this at a meeting chaired by Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev and dedicated to agricultural issues.

"The point I would like to emphasize is that recent years have shown the development of extensive farming and the depletion of the resource base. Our main development and growth in recent years has been precisely due to intensive farming. In general, accelerating the transition to intensive farming in crop production, as you emphasized, depends heavily on the application of modern irrigation. As modern irrigation expands, we see from real examples that it is possible to increase productivity," he stressed.

Mammadov noted that while the national average yield for food wheat is 3.2 tons, in 2025, the average yield in all farms that joined the food wheat program and in farms where modern irrigation was installed was 5.8 tons:

"This shows us that expanding modern irrigation should, of course, be one of the main priorities. We see the same picture not only in wheat production, but also in the production of all other crop products. I would also like to draw your attention to the fact that while the average yield in open-field vegetable cultivation is 20 tons, this figure reaches 60 tons with modern irrigation. However, in greenhouses, it reaches an average of 300 tons, or 3,000 centners, across the country. In some successful farms, this figure even rises to 4,500 centners. This shows that greenhouses can create large production volumes in a very small area and, at the same time, create employment opportunities for more people per hectare."