Iraq to convert surplus dates to ethanol

In Iraq, the national government has approved a plan to improve agricultural productivity by commencing a project to convert surplus dates into ethanol. The national date palm board said that an unnamed company from the UAE would process dates from the Tigris-Euphrates region in a project intended to assist the agricultural sector which has been beset by soil salinity and exhaustion.

Date production in Iraq has fallen to 350,000 tonnes from 900,000 earlier in the decade, but the export market has collapsed, leaving the country with a date glut.

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