Syria’s Drought Puts Assad’s Wheat Drive In Peril- Report

The “year of wheat” campaign pushed by Syrian President Bashar al-Assad is in jeopardy after low rainfall risked leaving an import gap of at least 1.5 million tonnes, according to preliminary estimates by officials and experts.

Syria’s President Bashar al-Assad has been pushing a campaign called “the year of wheat”. But instead he’s facing a year of drought.

A lack of rainfall risks leaving an import gap of at least 1.5 million tons – that Syria’s Minister of Agriculture has put down to climate change.

The harvest has dropped this year by around 50 percent – says Farmer Imad al Sayyed.

The agricultural blow and lack of funds to finance the imports will add pressure to Syria’s already battered economy.

Russia, one of the world’s largest exporters of wheat and one of Assad’s closest allies, says it’s stepping in to help the country meet the four million tonnes of annual domestic demand.

But its cargoes have been slow to arrive in recent years as funds grew scarce, with publicly available customs data showing no significant supplies to Syria.

Officials and expert estimates show at least 1.5 million tons of wheat imports were needed.

They said a 1.2 million-ton government purchasing target, driven by forced sales to the government, now looked wildly unrealistic.

The country’s bread basket lies in the northeast Hasaka province where much of the country’s cereals crop is in the hands of breakaway Kurds.

Damascus is unlikely to get any supplies from farmers under the Kurdish-led administration there, where over 60 percent of the country’s wheat is grown.