Turkish occupation of Afrin threatens olive season with heavy losses
Olive groves in Afrin canton face threat of the olive season, causing heavy losses to farmers as a result of forcing them to leave their villages, and the looting of tractors and agricultural machinery hinders the farmers remaining in the canton from doing their agricultural work
AFRIN/ FIDAN ABDULLAH-ROZANA DADO
Afrin canton is known for farming olive trees. According to statistics from Agriculture Authority in Afrin, there are 14 million olive trees in Afrin, most of the villagers rely on the season as an income source.
The attacks of Turkish occupation army and its mercenaries on Afrin canton forced its residents to leave their villages for fear of oppression and ill-treatment of the inhabitants, this has negatively impacted agricultural land, including olive groves, where farmers have been absent from their lands and services such as ploughing, weeding, irrigating and other agricultural work.
As for the farmers who remain in Afrin, they are no better than those who were forced to leave their homes. They cannot go to their farmland and work there because the mercenaries are preventing the residents from leaving the houses, and steal their agricultural tractors and plunder the houses, where there are many villages which have lost the agricultural machineries, after the villages of Afrin was famous for the availability of them.
On these days, Afrin farmers used to go to the orchards to plough the land to get rid of the weeds that grow in spring to avoid the possible damage to the olive groves, on the other hand, Euphyllura olivina begins to parasitize on olive buds which are likely to open in the next few days.
They appear in white cotton clusters, which produce a kind of honey flock which absorbs the juice from the synovial cluster, causing diseases of olive tree and causing damage to the season.
One of the causes of the spread of the insect (olive grove) reduced temperature and humidity and estimated its damage by 70% of the total production, farmers of Afrin canton had used pesticides spraying this season to maintain the season's success.
For his part, the head of Agriculture Authority in Afrin canton, Salah Ibo, told Hawar news agency that there is a great danger surrounding the olive trees in Afrin. "The farmers can no longer go to their fields and take care of them as usual as the past, and this will negatively affect the season of this year."
"On these days, the farmer was ploughing the olive groves and spraying the pesticides, in addition to irrigating them," Ibo said.
At the end of his speech, the head of Agriculture Authority in Afrin Salah Ibo appealed to the organizations to intervene in order to protect the agricultural wealth in Afrin canton, and return the farmers to their land and work there.
(H/S)
ANHA
