Ali Khamenei, the leader of the Islamic Republic, has described Iran's self-sufficiency in producing essential food items as a "top priority" and claims that Iran can produce food for four times its population. However, official data from the Iranian government paints a different picture of Iran's food dependency on other countries; that is, Iran is heavily reliant on imports from Russia, Turkey, India, and the United Arab Emirates for its basic food supplies. Research by Radio Farda's data mining group in the customs data of 2023 shows that the majority of animal corn and soybeans are imported from the United Arab Emirates, rice from India and Pakistan, sunflower oil from Turkey and the UAE, and wheat from Russia. This dependency has increased, especially for key products such as rice and wheat, due to internal conditions such as drought crises, market fluctuations, and international sanctions.
According to the Iranian customs data for 2023, the top five imported agricultural and food items are animal corn, soybeans, rice, sunflower oil, and wheat. Among essential food items, the Iranian government spends more on importing animal corn and soybeans than anything else. Iran's dependency on the UAE for importing animal corn and soybeans is significant. Specifically, Iran spent over $3.7 billion on animal corn imports last year. Soybeans also rank second among agricultural and food imports with $1.9 billion.
More than 46% of Iran's total imported animal corn comes from the UAE. This emirate also supplies over 58% of Iran's total soybean imports.
Among food items, rice is the third most important imported product in Iran. In 2023, the Islamic Republic spent over $1.3 billion on rice imports, over 90% of which came from India and Pakistan. It is no surprise that India, as the world's largest rice exporter, is the main supplier of this key product to Iran, holding a 62% share in the country's rice imports. More than half of the rice imports in 42 other countries worldwide are also supplied by India. Although many experts have warned about countries' excessive dependency on rice produced in India, in July 2023, India announced a ban on the export of various non-basmati rice types to adjust prices domestically.
This decision is particularly problematic for the Islamic Republic, which, in addition to sanctions, is on the FATF blacklist and has been excluded from the international financial system due to rejecting the Financial Action Task Force's bills on money laundering, as a significant portion of products purchased from India is bartered with the country's oil and petrochemical products, making it difficult for Iran to reduce its food dependency on India, a major customer of Iranian oil.
Turkey and the UAE's role in supplying Iran's sunflower oil: Iran is one of the main importing countries of oilseeds and meets or produces most of its domestic oil needs through imports. Before Russia's military invasion of Ukraine, the import of this food product to Iran was divided among Turkey, Ukraine, and the UAE. In 2023, Ukraine was completely removed from the list of oil suppliers to Iran, and that year, Turkey and the UAE supplied over 70% of Iran's total sunflower oil, with shares of 43% and 30%, respectively.
Wheat imports from Russia lead the way: Iranian farmers produced more wheat in the 2022-2023 agricultural year due to better rainfall and the government's determination of a suitable guaranteed purchase price. The Ministry of Jihad Agriculture announced that the amount of guaranteed wheat purchases in 2023 was equivalent to 10.5 million tons, which is more than a 133% increase compared to 2021. Customs data from Iran in 2023 also shows that during this time, over 2.5 million tons of wheat were imported from abroad, which provided nearly 19% of Iran's wheat needs for that year. Based on this data, the Iranian government allocated just over $1 billion to wheat purchases in 2023. In this regard, Russia, with a 62% share in wheat imports to Iran, has been by far the most important supplier of this product for the country.