'IRAQ AND THE PERSIAN GULF' [‎300v] (603/862)

464 IRRIGATION, AGRICULTURE, AND MINOR INDUSTRY
process—and exported principally to the U.S.A. Gall nuts from the
scrub oaks of Kurdistan are another valuable product, collected in
summer for use in the tanneries of Baghdad and also for export to
Europe. Gum tragacanth is also collected for export from the traga-
canth tree, principally in Kurdistan.
Pests and Disease
As in all hot climates insect pests are numerous, but this account
is concerned only with those that radically affect the agriculture of
the country. Certain pests cause disastrous damage, particularly to
cereal and date crops, and are also largely responsible for the general
inertia of the Iraqi fellahin Arabic for ‘peasant’. It was used by British officials to refer to agricultural workers or to members of a social class employed primarily in agricultural labour. , who become unwilling to labour for
improvement of their land when heavy losses from pests appear
certain.
Locusts are the principal plague of Iraq. The Moroccan locust
appears almost every year north of the Diyala and of the latitudes of
Ana and Tikrit, south of which climatic conditions are unfavourable,
though in 1926 a late swarm reached Kut. In years of ample rain
fall and early harvest the locusts in the hopper stage find sufficient
food in the desert, and when later the flying swarms invade Iraq the
cereal harvest may be already gathered; if crops are late the winged
swarms do much damage. In years of poor winter rainfall the hopper
locusts invade the sown lands before the harvest and do great execu
tion, sometimes amounting to 70 per cent, of the crop. In 1928 great
alarm was caused by the appearance in southern Iraq of swarms of
the Nejdi locust out of Arabia. Its usual habitat is north-eastern
Africa, and climatic conditions of Iraq were not propitious to it, so
that it proved much less destructive than the Moroccan locust, espe
cially since it preferred the leaves of trees to grain (photo. 177).
Measures for fighting locusts have been well organized since 1926.
The Plant Protection Section of the Department of Agriculture
maintains locust stations throughout the country and has introduced
several methods: these include the use of poisoned baits, the spraying
of crops with poisonous solutions, digging of ditches to trap hoppers,
ploughing of infested fallows to destroy eggs, or spraying them with
crude oil. The eradication of the pests calls for the co-operation of
all the countries of the Middle East, and an international bureau has
been established at Damascus which pools information about the
movements of locusts and methods of fighting them.
The sunna or arghija insect (Eurygaster integriceps) causes great
damage to cereals in northern Iraq, principally north of Kirkuk.