Syria’s oldest land for decades has pushed millions to edge

Wheat fields outside Cecalbia, near the Syrian city of Hama, must be gold and heavy with grain.

Instead, 40 Doms of Maher Hadad (10 acres) are dry and empty, barely a third of their usual harvest.

“This year was catastrophic due to drought,” said the 46-year-old farmer, thinking on the ground that cost him more to sow than she returned.

Its fields delivered only 190 kg (418 pounds) Dunum wheat – far less than 400-500 kg, which relies on a normal year.

“We have not reimbursed what we spent on agriculture; we lost money. I cannot finance next year and cannot cover the cost of food and drink,” Hadad told the BBC.

With two daughters for teens to eat, he now takes money from relatives to survive.

The fight of Hadad has echoed in Syria, where the oldest drought in 36 years has reduced the wheat crops by 40% and a pushed side -where nearly 90% of the population already lives in poverty -to the edge of a width nutritional crisis.

A report from the United Nations and Agriculture Organization (FAO) estimates that Syria will face a shortage of wheat of 2.73 million tonnes this year, the equivalent of annual nutritional needs for 16.25 million people.

Without more nutritional help or capacity to import wheat, the hunger crisis in Syria is deteriorating dramatically, warned Piro Thomaso Perry, a senior FAO program officer for Syria.

“Nutritional uncertainty can reach unprecedented levels by the end of 2025 in the middle of 2026,” he said, noting that more than 14 million Syrians – six in 10 people – are already struggling to eat enough. Of these, 9.1 million are acute hunger, including 1.3 million under difficult conditions, while 5.5 million risk slides into a crisis without emergency intervention.

The same report showed that rainfall had dropped by nearly 70%, criping 75% of the farmland in Syria.

“This is the difference between families to remain in their communities or to be forced to migrate,” said G -n Perry. “For urban households, this means raising bread prices. For rural families, it means a collapse of their livelihood.”

Agricultural families are already selling livestock to supplement the lost wheat income, reducing their number of daily diet and there is an increase in malnutrition in children and pregnant women.

Yet, the effects of land extend far beyond the thousands of kilometers of barren agricultural lands.

Wheat is a major harvest in Syria. It is the main ingredient for bread and pasta – two food staples that should be low -cost foods for families. So with the lack of wheat delivery, the price increases.

For the 39-year-old widow Sanaa Mahamid, the provision of bread has become a large-scale struggle.

With six children between the ages of nine and 20, she relies on the salaries of two sons, but their salaries are not enough to cover the basic expenses of the family.

“Sometimes we take money just to buy bread,” she said.

Last year, a bag of bread was worth the Sanna 500 Syrian pounds ($ 4.1; £ 3; 3.5 euros), but is now 4,500 Syrian pounds. To feed her family, Sanaum needs two bags a day – an expense of 9,000 pounds before taking into account any other food.

“That’s too much. It’s just bread and we still need other things,” she said. “If the price of bread rises again, it will be a big problem. The most important is the bread.”

The crisis is a challenge for temporary President Ahmed Al Sharaa, as his administration is working to restore Syria after the 14-year conflict and the elimination of former leader Bashar al-Assad in December 2024.

International agencies, such as the UN World Food Program (WFP), are in a hurry to enter with the government to provide bread subsidies for those at risk of being faced with severe nutritional uncertainty.

But assistance employees warn that subsidies are only a temporary solution and that the long -term stability of Syria depends on whether farmers can stay on their ground and maintain production.

“We are trying to keep people in the game of agriculture,” said Marian Ward, director of the WFP country for Syria. She worked to give $ 8 million (£ 6 million; 6.9 million euros) in direct payments to small farmers – about 150,000 people – who lost all their cultures.

“If you are not going to make money, you will leave the land. And then you will not have people who will work in agriculture, which is essential to the economy,” she said

But after more than a decade of war, the agricultural sector in Syria was already bathed by an economic collapse, destroying irrigation systems and producing flights.

Dr. Ali Alush, director of the agriculture of the Dir al Zur region, Syria, the bread, said the wheat fields should be irrigated four to six times a season, but due to the lack of rain, most farmers could not continue.

“The farmer’s main concern is to provide water first and water requires fuel. The price of the fuel jumped. It reached up to 11,000 to 12,000 Syrian pounds per liter,” said Dr. Alush.

The high cost of reducing fuel and electricity meant that water pumps were out of reach, and many manufacturers were already burdened with debt.

Dr. Alush says that a priority for his department and the transitional government in Damascus moisture in irrigation projects – like sunny drops – this will make water more accessible to farmers.

But projects like this take time and money – at the moment they have no farmers of wheat.

So for millions of Syrians across the country there is only one thing in the coming months: pray for rain.

Additional reporting from Lana Antaki in Damascus