Three years have passed since the beginning of the preservation project of the agricultural identity of the country.

Iraq is one of the countries that were in the first rank for the production of the finest types of dates, but the cultivation of palm is regressing day after the other, until that Iraq has become one of the latest countries in the number of palm trees, as the lands devoted for palm cultivation has become residential, agricultural or industrial areas.

And the province of Karbala is known by the cultivation of palms and is one of the dates' producing provinces, but recently its production has regressed for several reasons, most notably converting agricultural areas into residential areas as a result of the housing crisis.

And because of all these factors, the Al-Abbas's (p) Holy shrine has proceeded within its strategic plans to preserve this wealth from extinction to establish a model far of rare palm varieties, investing the vast desert spaces and converting them into green spaces. In compliance with the Hadith “The land is for he who revive it.”

On this day (January 23) of 2017, the al-Abbas's (p) holy shrine laid the first building block for setting up a model farm for palm trees of rare varieties, and today its area has reached (500) dunums, (8,422) trees were planted, distributed among (78) rare varieties, The road is still in its infancy.

This project aims to:

1- Preserving the agricultural identity of the country.

2- These farms will serve as natural stoppers for wind and dust storms.

3- Providing job opportunities through the employment of manpower to take care of the facilities of this project.

4- Contributing in supplying the local market with good and rare quality of agricultural and field crops and fruits.

5- Employing the agricultural industrial capabilities and expertise and putting them in their proper field.

6- Investment of groundwater by drilling artesian wells.

7 - Cultivation of varieties of rare fruit trees and benefit from them as well.

8- Introducing modern agricultural and industrial techniques and mechanisms, drawing on local and international expertise.

9- Make part of this project a source of reproduction of rare types of palm trees.

10- Investment of desert farmland and development of agricultural reality.

It is worth noting that this project came as a complement to another project, which is the Al-Saqi Water Replacement Project for the Euphrates River, which includes digging artesian wells to face the water crisis and take advantage of the groundwater, which has proven successful in laboratory tests to irrigate crops, including palm trees.