About 13.4 million tons of wheat are estimated to be produced in the country during the current fiscal year (March 2018-19), the manager of “Wheat Project” undertaken by the Ministry of Agriculture, Esmaeil Esfandiyari, said. According to the official, about 1.2 million tons of wheat have been purchased from farmers by the government since the beginning of the wheat harvest season about two months, Mehr News Agency reported. “This year’s wheat purchases from local farmers at guaranteed prices began on March 26 in the southeastern Sistan-Baluchestan Province,” said Yazdan Seif, a deputy agriculture minister, who also doubles as the head of Government Trading Corporation of Iran. The Iranian government, he added, will purchase between 10.2 million and 10.5 million tons of wheat from local farmers this year. At present, wheat is cultivated over 2.05 million hectares of irrigated and 3.85 million hectares of rain-fed land. The ministry is planning to decrease the land under wheat cultivation and increase productivity in farms, so as to reduce the amount of water and energy used in the cultivation processes of the grain.