AL-SHOLAA, Iraq, October 24 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - Umm Najm, a pioneer of women’s agriculture in Iraq, stands guard over the cooperative she set up on the outskirts of Baghdad 30 years ago. “I am ready to take up arms to stop the great thief (U.S. President) George W. Bush setting foot on Iraqi soil,” she warns.

With fields full of vegetables and orchards of fruit trees, the cooperative covers 250 hectares (620 acres) along both banks of an irrigation channel close to Al-Sholaa, 20 kilometers north of Baghdad.

In Iraq’s patriarchal society of the 1970s, Umm Najm was bold enough to press ahead with her project: to create a cooperative managed exclusively by women who normally went to work in the fields without ever having a say in the running of things.

At the outset, Umm Najm, now 65 and with failing eyesight, gathered together 40 women and received 40 hectares from the state.

Today the area of the venture has increased six fold and work is shared with the husbands and children of the women first associated with the project.

“The battle has been long but the results are there,” said Umm Najm, whose real name is J’hada Shomran Abaadi and who insists on wearing her black peasant’s dress wherever she goes.

With a round face and eyes hidden behind thick tortoiseshell glasses, Umm Najm is quick at repartee and has a good sense of humor.

She has traveled to several Arab, Asian and European countries to talk of her experiences at conferences for women and farmers.

She tells of always having refused to swap her black dress for more modern clothes when traveling in Europe despite the requests of Iraqi diplomats there.

Since the start of the embargo slapped on Iraq by the United Nations for invading Kuwait in 1990, Umm Najm has devoted herself to increasing the yield of her cooperative in a country that has seen a drastic drop in food produce.

“We have increased our production to lessen the effects of the embargo despite the lack of manure and spare parts for agricultural machines,” she said.

Since the launch of the cooperative, known as the “women’s farm”, Umm Najm has provided many social benefits for her co-workers, setting up a school and crèche, as well as allowing maternity leave and helping out with births, deaths and marriages.

A part of the profits, which are equally distributed, has been invested in the construction of roads and electricity for the cooperative, which has revolutionized farming methods.

The farm has become a major seed and manure supplier to farmers in the region, as well as contributing to raising yields in a sector that employed millions of Egyptians during the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq war and which has now seen a return of Iraqis.

Umm Najm, a member of the ruling Baath party, who has been trained to handle firearms to protect her fields from thieves, said she was ready to take up her gun once more if the United States launches a military strike to topple Saddam Hussein's regime.