The total value of wheat, flour and bread chain production in the country is 600 thousand billion Rials, of which 440 thousand billion Rials is a public share, and 160 thousand billion Rials is subsidized by the government, said the director of the state-run Iranian Trade Company.

Yazdan Seif on Sunday at the Tayyeb Bread Festival, held at the Astan Qods Razavi Conference and Exhibition in Mashhad, added: Next year, the government’s subsidy of 160 thousand billion Rials will increase to 300 thousand billion Rials due to the increase in price of guaranteed wheat purchases.

He added: 5.5 million hectares of land in the country is under cultivation for wheat, of which 3.8 million hectares is rain-fed and the rest is irrigated.

The Deputy Minister of Agriculture said: two million people in the country, including farmers and their families are working on wheat production. This wheat will be shredded through 1.5 million shipments having weights from 100 Kg up to 25 tons and finally are being stored at storage centers in the amount of 4.5 million tons.

Said added:“there are 1200 shopping centers in the country activated during the season of guaranteed wheat purchases, and with 5-10 active trained staff in each center.”

He pointed to the existence of 400 silos and 400 flour factories in the country and said: The total employment of the wheat, flour and bread industry in the country is one million people, including one farmer in every arable land without their families, of which about 300,000 people work in bakeries and related businesses there are about 660,000 farmers providing the bread to the country for a population of 80 million people.

Deputy Minister of agriculture said: 11-48 percent of people’s energy is provided by bread and the government has begun measures to improve the quality of bread since 2015 so that no wheat has been imported since that year and all needs of the Iranian people have been met from domestic production.

Said added: On the other hand, from May to July, the rainfall in the cold regions of the country has decreased and the air temperature increased, and this has reduced wheat production in these areas.

Deputy Minister of Agriculture said that this year’s pricing of the guild was such that for many flour mills it was an incentive to buy wheat themselves, so the sale of wheat to factories was reduced from 180-200 thousand tons last year to 40 thousand tons.

Saif cited other government measures to improve the quality of bread production and added: to strengthen the wheat chain, a system of buying wheat from farmers has been launched since year 2016 so that the quality of wheat purchased from the farmers can be monitored.

He added: the launch of this system and the increase of circulation of information about wheat farmers in the ministry of agriculture, as well as training farmers, have reduced the aging of wheat from 300,000 tons to 56,000 tons this year.

The CEO of the Iranian state-owned Commerce Company added: to reduce the intermediary link between the purchase of wheat and the flour factory, priority was given to the permanent purchase of wheat and thus the fares were paid to farmers so that this year 650 billion Rials was paid for the delivery of wheat to the shopping centers.

Removing the temporary wheat shopping centers and reducing intermediate rings would save the government 2400 billion Rials and generate revenue for the farmer, he said.

He said that the standardization of wheat shopping centers, training of laboratories labor and systematization of quality control were other measures of the government to improve the quality of wheat. This year shows that the amount of gluten and wheat protein purchased by the company has ranged between 10.5-13.8% and that of hectoliters between 74-85%.

Said added:with government action, the age of what production in the country has dropped from more than 2% to 0.01%.

 He continued: to improve the quality of the bread production chain in the flour mills, we endeavored to prevent these units from producing any problems in the flour production and not to be credited to the government, so the demands of the factories are being paid in installments.

 He said that allowing the bakery to buy its own flour from factories has created competition among the flour mills, and the wheat purchasing system allows bakers to get flour from the factory.

Saif noted the launch of a smart flour transportation system early next year and the activation of flour sampling inspection teams in Tehran and later other cities to discuss new measures to improve the quality f bread production.