From Self-Sufficiency to Wheat Imports: Syria Faces an Uphill Battle to Secure Bread

International warnings continue to mount over Syria’s growing inability to secure enough wheat to provide bread for its people, due to the impact of war and climate change.

According to the latest data on Syria’s wheat sector, the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) reported on June 27, 2025, that nearly 2.5 million hectares of wheat fields have been affected by severe weather conditions.

Wheat in Syria

This damage is expected to push Syrian authorities to rely more heavily on wheat imports — a significant shift for a country that was self-sufficient before the outbreak of the Syrian uprising in 2011, when annual wheat production reached 4.1 million tons.

“The country has not seen such bad climate conditions in 60 years,” said Haya Abu Assaf, assistant to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) representative in Syria.

Syria's water levels have seen “a very significant drop compared to previous years, which is very worrying,” Abu Assaf told AFP, as a relatively short winter rainy season and decreased rainfall take their toll.

“A gap of between 2.5 to 2.7 million tonnes in the wheat crop is expected, meaning that the wheat quantity will not be sufficient to meet local needs,” Abu Assaf said, putting “around 16.3 million people at risk of food insecurity in Syria this year.”

Syria’s new central government and the Kurdish-led Autonomous Administration—which controls large parts of the northeastern provinces of al-Hasakah, ar-Raqqah, and Deir ez-Zor—are competing to purchase the 2025 wheat harvest from local farmers.

These three provinces are known for producing Syria’s highest-quality wheat and barley.

Both Damascus and the Kurdish administration have announced financial incentives for farmers on top of the market price per ton of wheat.

Syria’s Ministry of Economy set the wheat purchase price between $290 and $320 per ton, depending on quality, with an added $130 incentive payment approved by a presidential decree aimed at encouraging farmers to deliver their harvests to the General Establishment for Cereal Processing and Trade.

On June 11, 2025, Syria’s president, Ahmed al-Sharaa, issued a decree offering a $130 bonus for farmers who supply their wheat to the national grain agency.

Meanwhile, in northeast Syria, the Autonomous Administration set its purchase price at $420 per ton, which includes a direct support payment of $70 per ton.

For comparison, the Assad regime—prior to its fall—had set the 2024 wheat price at $350 per ton, while Kurdish-controlled areas offered $310 per ton.

‘Self-Sufficiency’

The Syrian Establishment for Grains in Damascus is responsible for purchasing local wheat and signing new import contracts through local companies.

Wheat prices for the 2025 season were set against the backdrop of declining production and an unprecedented drought, according to experts and officials.

Syria’s Ministry of Agriculture expects to harvest between 300,000 and 350,000 tons of wheat in areas under government control.

According to Hassan al-Othman, Director-General of the Syrian Establishment, for Grains, all technical and logistical preparations have been completed to receive the 2025 wheat harvest, including the setup of 37 wheat collection centers across all provinces.

Speaking to Syria’s state news agency SANA on June 2, 2025, al-Othman stated that the institution has prepared 27 concrete and metal silos with a storage capacity of up to 1.55 million tons, in addition to several warehouses capable of holding more than 24,000 tons of wheat.

The Establishment for Grains aims to purchase between 250,000 and 300,000 tons this season.

“We have not achieved self-sufficiency, but as an institution, we are working to ensure food security by importing wheat and milling it in our own facilities,” al-Othman said.

This has sparked growing questions about Syria’s ability to reclaim its former position as a wheat-producing nation—one that could not only meet domestic demand but also export the surplus, as was the case before 2011. Back then, vast agricultural lands were still productive, before war and mass displacement took much of them out of service.

Before the outbreak of the Syrian uprising in 2011, Syria produced approximately 4 million tons of wheat annually—enough to meet local consumption and allow for exports to neighboring countries.

As of 2022, Syria ranked fourth among Arab wheat producers, behind Egypt, Algeria, and Iraq, according to World Population Review.

In recent years, per capita access to locally produced wheat has dropped to less than 20 kg annually, forcing Syria to import roughly 200,000 tons per month.

The last price set for buying wheat from farmers under the now-ousted Assad regime was 5,500 Syrian pounds per kilo for the 2024 season—around $0.40 per kilo, based on the exchange rate of 13,500 pounds per U.S. dollar—a price that fell short of farmers’ expectations.

On March 25, 2025, Damascus made its first major international wheat purchase since Assad’s fall, securing 100,000 tons through a global tender.

Strategic Support for Farmers

“Achieving self-sufficiency in wheat production in Syria is only possible through unified resource management and a clear strategy that offers strategic support to farmers,” Syrian agricultural engineer Abdul Karim Abdul Latif told Al-Estiklal.

Abdul Latif, who spent years working in Syria’s Ministry of Agriculture, emphasized the need for government subsidies on the sale of wheat and barley seeds. “The pricing should be attractive to farmers, and a full cost analysis must consider the gap between wheat selling prices and the rising costs of production,” he said.

He stressed that offering fair prices for crops ensures farmers earn a decent profit, which would in turn encourage them to increase wheat cultivation—an essential step toward national self-sufficiency and securing affordable bread for Syrians.

“In recent years, farmers were forced to buy diesel fuel from the black market, as allocations from the Assad government were insufficient, on top of rising labor and transportation costs,” he added.

Abdul Latif pointed out that under Assad’s rule, the regime covered only about 25% of wheat demand in its areas, relying heavily on Russian wheat to make up the rest. Syria’s annual wheat needs are around 3 million tons.

He recalled that until 2010, Syria’s strategic wheat reserves were enough to last two years. But in 2021, due to severe drought, the country saw its lowest wheat output on record—just 100,000 tons.

Abdul Latif stressed the importance of allowing government-run wheat collection centers to remain flexible in pricing. “Wheat prices should not be fixed; they must be adjustable in response to market rates to help ensure the largest possible volume is bought from farmers,” he said.

He also highlighted the importance of biotechnology in improving wheat productivity, especially through better water efficiency and developing drought- and salt-resistant crops.

Abdul Latif called for a greater focus on genetic engineering to create drought-resistant wheat strains by identifying natural mutations in existing varieties or creating new ones through radiation or chemical-induced mutations.

“Developing new, high-yield, drought- and disease-resistant wheat varieties is essential to reaching self-sufficiency. This also requires expanding irrigated farmland for these new crops.”

He further called for a comprehensive national plan to rehabilitate agricultural land and develop wheat farming through an integrated system aimed at maximizing productivity. This includes using the latest techniques to combat crop diseases and pests, and improving wheat quality by breeding varieties that can withstand heat, cold, and drought, and are well-suited to Syrian climates.

“Given the current wheat shortage, importing wheat is the only alternative—at least for now—until government plans are activated. This requires taking advantage of lifted U.S. and EU sanctions on wheat imports and channeling that support into grain and seed production projects, as well as modernizing storage infrastructure by building large-capacity silos,” Abdul Latif concluded.

During Bashar al-Assad’s time in power, Syria regularly received wheat shipments from Russia. After his ouster on December 8, 2024, Russia resumed deliveries in April 2025 with a vessel carrying 6,600 tons of wheat to the Port of Latakia, and another shipment to Tartus.

Later that month, Syria also received the first installment of a 200,000-ton wheat grant from Iraq.  Yassin Sharif al-Hajim, the chargé d'affaires at the Iraqi embassy in Damascus, said the grant had originally been allocated during Assad’s tenure, but was delayed for four months following his removal and only resumed once the political situation stabilized.

In May 2025, Damascus reached a deal with Turkiye to begin importing flour in several phases over the coming months.