Syria Today | Syria to import wheat for third year

Syria to import wheat for third year

Syria will import wheat for a third year in a row because of persistent drought and an outbreak of wheat rust.

The domestic wheat harvest is estimated to total 2.4m tonnes, the state-run Al-Baath daily newspaper reported on June 15. The paper also said last year's wheat harvest was 2.8m tonnes, a figure significantly lower than earlier figures released by the government which put the 2009 harvest at 3.7m tonnes.

Minister of Agriculture and Agrarian Reform Adel Safar had previously predicted that output would reach 4m tonnes this year, enough to meet annual domestic consumption of between 3.6m and 4m tonnes.

While the Baath article blamed the fall in wheat production on the drought, a June 14 report by the US Department of Agriculture said a wheat rust epidemic which has swept Syria, Turkey, Lebanon, Iraq and Iran was behind the decline.

"The concentration of rust-affected crops is the highest in north-east Syria and southern and south-east Turkey, where the governments reported outbreaks in the prime wheat growing regions," the report said.

Meanwhile, the World Food Programme said on June 20 it has begun handing out food packages to 190,000 people in the governorates of Hassakeh, Raqqa and Deir ez-Zor. A statement from the agency said a funding shortfall was preventing it from helping a further 110,000 people in need of emergency food assistance.

Syria has suffered the effects of an ongoing drought since 2006. The devastating 2007-2008 season, widely considered the worst drought in 40 years, was followed by another dry spell in 2008-2009.