By Jamie Watt
My family has a habit. Every spring and summer, when we head into the mountains to hike, we stop at the roadside stands. We pull over for tomatoes still warm from the sun, bundles of herbs, whatever fruit is in season. The seller is usually the farmer, or someone in the family. The whole exchange takes two minutes, but it ties you to the land in a way no restaurant in Erbil quite manages.
That small exchange is a form of agri-tourism. And if the Kurdistan Region is serious about building an economy that does not rise and fall with oil prices, it is exactly the kind of exchange we should be cultivating at scale.
The argument for diversification is not new. The KRG laid it out clearly in its 2020 economic reform bill, which prioritized eight sectors, agriculture and tourism among them, as the foundations of a more resilient economy. Oil revenues have long dominated public finances, and the swings of global energy markets have made that dependence harder to plan around. So the real question is where to focus, and agri-tourism makes a strong case because we would not be building from nothing. The raw material is already here.
Kurdistan’s mountains are exceptional, and people already know it. The areas around Amadiya, Akre, Barzan, and Sulaymaniyah draw real numbers, with Akre alone recording nearly 500,000 tourists in 2025. The visitors are already making the trip. The question is whether we can give them reasons to stay longer and spend more while they are here. Agriculture is a big part of the answer. Berries from Shaqlawa, mountain cherries and tahini from Amedi, rice from the fields around Akre, these are products you find nowhere else, grown in the very places people already visit. Agri-tourism is simply a way of letting them taste that for themselves.
Some of the groundwork is already in place. The KRG’s Gashtukal initiative, launched in 2022 under the Deputy Prime Minister’s Office and developed with the Ministry of Agriculture and the Board of Tourism, is built to grow agri-tourism as a source of rural jobs. With support from GIZ, the German development agency, it has trained 36 agribusinesses and selected 20 for ongoing technical coaching. It has also mapped agri-tourism sites across the region, giving visitors a practical guide for finding them.
On the ground, the idea is already working. Hamid Ismail’s Kurdistan Farm in Halabja, believed to be the first agri-tourism project of its kind in Iraq, covers more than 10 hectares and grows over 105 products. It runs a weekly market where visitors buy straight from the farm, eat freshly grilled fish, and spend the day somewhere that is as much a cultural outing as an agricultural one. The farm employs more than 30 people. That is well past the pilot stage.
Other countries show what this can become. Morocco built a rural tourism economy around its farming heritage in the Atlas Mountains, linking visitors to argan oil cooperatives, mountain honey producers, and date farms as part of a deliberate rural development plan. In parts of the Middle Atlas, tourism now accounts for more than 60 percent of household income. When visitors deal directly with the land and the people who work it, the money lands in the villages instead of the city hotels.
That kind of village-level return is what the KRG’s wider tourism push could use. The government has secured more than $7.5 billion in tourism investment over the past five years and set a target of 20 million visitors a year. Those are ambitious numbers, and agri-tourism is one of the surest ways to make them count. It gives people a reason to leave the city, spend time in the villages, and go home with more than photographs.
When my family stops at those mountain stands, we are not spending much. But we are spending it directly with a farmer, in a place we chose because the land drew us there. Multiply that across hundreds of thousands of visitors, add the right support, farm stays, harvest trails, roadside stalls that meet a basic standard, and the numbers start to add up.
The mountains have always been one of Kurdistan’s defining features. With the right backing, they can be one of its defining economic strengths too.