China-made machinery empowers Iraqi farmers

BAGHDAD - Maliha Hussein, a 70-year-old Iraqi farmer, did not image how the Chinese technology would change the traditional farming in the Iraqi countryside after spending most of her life doing various fieldwork mainly with her own hands.

"Every day at dawn, I used to mow the grass and clean the farm and the waterways to provide fodder for the cattle. I suffered from arthritis pain," Hussein said, as she sat on the edge of her farm in the town of al-Alam, some 10 km east of Tikrit, the capital of Salahudin province in the north of Baghdad.

But her grandson Farouq, 31, is now doing the same work much quickly and easily, because he bought a grass-cutter machine imported from China.