Once, before its 1980s war with Iran, Iraq had 30 million date palms producing 1 million tonnes of dates annually.
But Saddam Hussein's military campaigns and decades of neglect savaged the industry, cutting the number of trees in half and yearly production to 420,000 tonnes.
Young Iraqis, needed to scale the tall palms to hand-cut and lower bunches of golden fruit to the ground, see no future in it and are leaving the orchards for government jobs with better salaries and fewer hardships, Salim said.
"The industry is not viable any more. The revenues don't cover the money spent on preparing the palms for production," said Salim, a date farmer with 6,000 trees.
"In the past, the young generations were adopting their ancestors' jobs, but now they have shifted to police, army and civil jobs, abandoning the date industry," said Salim, standing in his dusty palm orchard in Baghdad's Doura district of Doura.
Iraq, which relies on its vast oil and gas fields for most of its economy, now ranks only 7th among world date producers, according to Kamil Mikhlif al-Dulaimi, head of the Agriculture Ministry's date palm board.
But the ministry has an ambitious $80 million plan to rebuild the date palm inventory up to 40 million trees in 10 years and to introduce more marketable varieties.
"We are working now to change the date palm map, and to produce the species the world wants," Dulaimi said.
Ninety percent of Iraq's production is one variety of date, the Zehdi. The ministry is expanding the menu to include the Hillawi, Khadrawi, Sayer, Maktoom, Derrie, Ashrasi and Barhee varieties.
It is also introducing new types of laboratory-produced trees that will bear fruit in two years instead of the four or five it usually takes.
The ministry recently signed a $17 million contract to buy seven crop-spraying helicopters to fight orchard pests.
"Having these helicopters means a big step forward for the agriculture sector," Deputy Agriculture Minister Ghazi al-Abboudi said in an interview. For the latest updates PRESS CTR + D or visit Stock Market news Today
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