Amid growing water shortages Iranian farmers turn to protest!

Iranian farmer Mostafa Benvidi shows his wounds suffered during clashes between police and farmers in Varzaneh, Isfahan.

• Protests have gotten larger at a time when economic woes in the country from inflation to unemployment have fueled unrest repeatedly over the last year.

The small group of Iranian farmers gathered around their tractors - long idle, parked at the town entrance next to a canal that once irrigated their fields but has been dry for years - and they protested, pleading for help from the government.

"We are the people," shouted Mostafa Benvidi. "Help the people. At night they go to bed hungry!" They held signs addressing officials they blame for their dried-up fields. "How long will you eat your bread made with our blood?" one sign read.Every day, farmers hold their small protest outside Varzaneh. It's a sign of the anger that has been growing over water shortages caused by a years-long drought but worsened, experts say, by government mismanagement

Protests have gotten larger, with bursts of violence, at a time when economic woes in the country from inflation to unemployment have fueled unrest repeatedly over the last year.

In March, Benvidi lost sight in his left eye and has more than 100 pellet shots in his body, suffered during clashes between police and farmers who held a sit-in strike in Varzaneh.

Benvidi and his family of six siblings and their father used to rely on their 3-hectare farm, planting barley, wheat, corn and cotton. But they haven't been able to farm for years because of lack of water. Now Benvidi is unemployed.

Over the past decade, Iran has seen the most prolonged and severe drought in over 30 years, according to the UN's Food and Agriculture Organisation. An estimated 97 percent of the country has faced some level of drought, according to the Iran Meteorological Organization.

Isfahan province, where Varzaneh is located, and neighbouring provinces in central Iran have been hit particularly hard.

The Zayandeh Roud river once watered this region, flowing down from the Zagros Mountains, through the city of Isfahan and through a string of farming towns, some 550km south of the capital Tehran.

But it dried up years ago. The fields around Varzaneh are now stretches of desiccated, salt-laced dirt. The cattle are gone. Around 90 per cent of the farming activities in the district have faded away, said Reza Khalili, an environmental activist in Varzaneh.