## 4 Challenges to Sustainable Agriculture Practices in Iraq
Agricultural production in Iraq is dominated by smallholders who do not realize how economies of scale could reduce their transaction costs. The price of agricultural commodities varies significantly because there are no market mechanisms to regulate prices. Farmers find it difficult for their product prices to compete with those of imported foods. Post-harvest and marketing facilities are non-existent due to low levels of agricultural industrialization. This results in poor marketing infrastructure and the underdevelopment of local markets. There is little quality data on the extent of food losses in Iraq. Estimates are that 15% of cereals and legumes and 33% of other perishable crops are lost due to inadequate post-harvest facilities. Farmers are unlikely to invest in marketing infrastructure until the private sector fully emerges to leverage the available opportunities. Although there are cooperative frameworks for establishing farming associations and agriculture cooperatives, little or no attention has been paid to their development. Iraq is prone to various natural and environmental problems owing to flawed policies. The lack of effective policies has increased the extent of land degradation, water shortages, desertification, soil infertility, soil salinity, and declining forest cover (only 4%). The salinity level in Iraq's Shatt al-Arab waterway is exceedingly high due to the confluence of two major rivers (Tigris and Euphrates) in Basra. Because the Euphrates River's salinity is high and is expected to increase with more irrigation channels in the basin, many people have been forced to abandon their farms. Excessive irrigation and high evapotranspiration rates have necessitated the use of adaptive management practices such as conventional residue management. Environmental agriculture includes clean agriculture, safe farming, and healthy food production using practices that optimize the use of natural resources without polluting the environment. Those practices include soil protection, biodiversity promotion, water management, climate conservation, and the avoidance of chemical compounds. About 60% of ecosystem functions are prone to deterioration due to unsustainable agriculture. Therefore, sustainable agricultural practices, such as organic farming and clean technologies (e.g., the use of lasers), must be adapted to local farming in Iraq to ensure that crops respond to the prevailing environment and climate conditions. These practices can be benchmarked using LCA to identify the hotspots for improvement. So far, however, no LCA studies have been conducted on maize production in Iraq. Although laser-induced maize production is less impactful to the environment than conventional practices, several challenges hinder the adoption of the LCA framework: data limitations, data assumptions, the lack of awareness by farmers and local agencies, etc. This study found that laser-induced maize production can reduce global warming, human toxicity, aquatic ecotoxicity, acidification, aquatic eutrophication, and soil ecotoxicity. These findings can help promote new policies that will improve the environmental performance of the available maize production systems.