Growth
Notes from a Regenerative Farm in Iraq

Although I’ve been lucky enough to visit the country many times during my life, my experience of Iraq has been very specific to Baghdad. Being from a shi’a family, I have of course visited Kerbala and Najaf, and I’ve briefly visited the beautiful marshes in the south of Iraq, but I hope to see more of the country and to expand my knowledge about the many regions outside of the capital.

In starting the journey of writing this book I was excited about the idea of collaborating with Mary Sarsam, an artist whose interests in Iraqi food and seed-growing intersect with my own. Mary’s connection with the Iraqi Seed Collective, a mostly US-based group of heritage seed growers and preservation enthusiasts, led to my introduction to Sajad Zalzala, who runs Enduring Harvest, a project founded to combat the effects of desertification and land degradation. Climate change is having severe effects on Iraqi land. The extreme summer heat, now reaching more than 50°C, is resulting in very dry soils and a general lack of water, making farming extremely difficult.

What Enduring Harvest aims to achieve with their Iraq Pilot Farm is to implement a system that maximises what resources are available in a way that is sustainable and long-lasting. One of their main projects is the creation and running of Al-Khudhr Regenerative and Organic Farm (AROF), located near Samawah, a few hours south of Baghdad in Al-Muthanna, Iraq’s most economically deprived province – Al-Khudhr being a nearby area named after an Islamic figure known as ‘the Green one’, whose shrine is located in the same province. A few miles away is Uruk, an archaeological site with artefacts up to 4,000 years old.

During my most recent trip to Iraq in January 2026, I visited the farm out of an interest in their work and to see what they were growing. My visit began with a three-hour drive from Baghdad, passing along the Euphrates River. On our arrival – my family were excited about the idea of a trip and decided to join me – we were met by Mohammed, who I’d been communicating with through messages to organise the visit. While the team who run the farm don’t have specific titles, Mohammed’s role at AROF is equivalent to that of a senior project manager.

Before starting our tour, we were offered a generous breakfast of eggs and geyamr, a type of thick clotted cream very popular in Iraq. Hospitality, especially through food, is a very important feature of Iraqi culture, and I’d been advised that this is particularly prevalent in the south. During our breakfast Mohammed spoke to us about the farm, advising us not to set our 20 expectations too high about its scale and condition. I was aware that the project was still relatively early in its development, given its large scale, so was not imagining anything too elaborate from the farm itself but was excited about the idea of the potential it had. As soon as we started the tour, however, I realised how modest Mohammed was being. The size of the farm is around 30 donam, a traditional unit of land area amounting to around 75,000m². As well as being home to a range of animals that contribute to methods of sustainable agriculture, the range of plants and vegetables grown very much surpassed my expectations.

During our winter visit the farm was still beautifully green – although the temperature does get chilly at this time of year the sun never really stops shining. There were rows of herbs, radishes, cauliflower and a variety of trees. During the summer the range grows to include figs, olives, aubergines, broad beans, pomegranates and more. We strolled around the farm while Mohammed told us about the team’s trials and errors over the years. As a project led by people with limited farming and growing experience, but with an interest in and passion for mitigating the issues that lead to desertification, learning the land has taken time and failure in one sense, and has led to increased knowledge and success in another. A combination of patience and learning has led to a vibrant growing space that is an emblem of hope for an Iraq that can sustain itself with locally grown produce.

As we walked and spoke while I tried my best to understand our Arabic conversation, Mohammed would pick leaves and herbs for me to touch and try. As I was handed fresh henna leaves I realised I had never given much thought to what plant the brown dye that I’ve used to make patterns onto my skin so many times over the years actually comes from. Fresh dill, which has become deeply associated with an Iraqi rice dish for me, Timmen Bagila, or Broad Bean Rice, was also offered to me and was the most fragrant dill I can remember ever tasting.

In my conversation with Sajad, a founder of AROF and a board member of Enduring Harvest, who is based in the US, he expressed that the hope for the project is for it to become an educational centre where the skills and knowledge gained around sustainable farming practices can be shared. There is also a hope to use part of the site for tourism; when I visited there were cosy tents set up as part of a plan for tourists to soon start to visit. This is another area in which patience has been required as three years were spent applying for tourism permissions which have finally been granted.

As well as reflecting on the successes of the farm in getting it to the place that it is currently, Sajad also shared some of the challenges, the main one being income generation. While the actual set up and building of the farm was self-funded, income is needed to sustain the work that has been started. Iraq is still in an early stage when it comes to tourism after years of war and civil unrest, so there is limited opportunity for making money through this avenue. While the future feels hopeful in ways, it’s hard to know how long this 22 industry can take to build and so how much can be made to support projects such as this.

Even with just a short visit, I left the farm feeling inspired and excited about the existence of this project. While resilience can be a complicated subject in that people are often expected to have an endless supply of it, the abundance and vibrancy of the land felt symbolic of Iraq’s renewal and growth, and also of what can be achieved by maintaining a connection with one’s heritage in diaspora, as Sajad and his colleagues have done.