The total production value of the wheat, flour and bread chain in the country is 600 thousand billion Rials

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.