Agriculture in Syria, and more recently in Iraq, has been identified as an opportunity to ISIL’s extortion operations, providing the group another avenue to generate revenue.
Based on sources in the rural al-Raqqa, ISIL’s Syrian stronghold, the organisation is said to extort money under the
name of “zakat” from farmers by taking portions of their wheat and barley crops.
Additionally, ISIL has confiscated agricultural machinery from local farms, which it then rents back to the farms
from which they were seized. Aside from these steep taxes and criminal rackets, ISIL is able to set
the crop prices by taking control of the fields and means of production, storing the wheat in silos,
and controlling its distribution.
The UN Food and Agriculture Organisation estimates that ISIL currently operates in part of Iraq that
account for over 40 percent of Iraq’s wheat cultivating land.
This allows the group to profit from the wheat industry while strategically restricting supplies to minority Yazidi and Christians as well as those who oppose ISIL's campaign. ISIL has also allegedly taken control of multiple government-
operated wheat silos in the most fertile areas in Iraq. In addition there are reports that ISIL is
integrating stolen harvests with existing regional agricultural businesses (an act which essentially launders stolen crops by obscuring its origin), or by violently acquiring silos and keeping those previously employed on the payroll to carry out daily business, only now under ISIL control.
Since June 2014, ISIL reportedly took control of an estimated sixteen wheat silos including the largest silo
in Makhmur which houses approximately 8 percent of Iraq’s annual production.
As well as obtaining revenue from selling crops, seizing agricultural supplies could also be intended
to intimidate farmers and other Iraqis in ISIL-controlled areas.
ISIL has already used its control of water resources to destroy farmland in southern Iraq, by releasing water held by Fallujah dam.
The release destroyed cropland 160 kilometers downstream, leaving millions of people without water in the cities of Karbala, Najaf and Babil.