Syria Today | Tough Times

Tough Times

By Julien Lennert
Photos Adel Samara

“Agriculture is dead,” Abu Mohammed Ahmed, a farmer from a village on the eastern shore of Lake Tishreen around 100km from Raqqa, says matter-of-factly. “If they don’t reinstate the subsidies this year, no one will continue working the land.”

The world’s oldest agricultural sector is enduring tough times, hit by three straight years of drought and the painful effects of the lifting of government subsidies on diesel. With the agricultural sector accounting for around 20 percent of the country’s GDP and 19 percent of its workforce, few in Syria are left untouched by the sector’s problems.

This year marks what may be the fourth successive year of a drought that has decimated much of the country’s agriculture sector, particularly in the north-eastern regions which are heavily dependent on rainfall for their harvests.

In an interview with Syria Today, Hassan Katana, director of statistics and planning at the Ministry of Agriculture and Agrarian Reform, said three of the country’s 13 governorates – Raqqa, Deir ez-Zor and Hassakeh – as well as the semi-arid badia regions were still suffering from the impact of the drought. The governorates of Raqqa and Hassakeh are two of the country’s primary wheat-growing areas, with around 75 percent of Syria’s wheat grown in the north-eastern region.

“Around 60 percent of land in these governorates is affected,” Katana said. “It’s a normal year except for the three governorates and the badia, although irrigated areas in these governorates are doing well.”

During the 2007-08 season, nearly 75 percent of agricultural families in the north-eastern region suffered total crop failure, according to the Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO). The average yield of basic crops dropped in irrigated areas by 32 percent and in rain-fed areas by as much as 79 percent. Wheat and barley yields dropped by 47 and 67 percent respectively compared to the previous year.

Syria’s wheat production for 2009 is estimated to come in at 2.5m tonnes, according to the National Agricultural Policy Centre (NAPC). This is a slight increase on the approximately 2m tonnes produced in 2008, which led Syria to import wheat for the first time in 15 years. Syria’s average annual production stands at 4.7m tonnes, of which 3.8m tonnes are consumed internally.

Rainfall for the country as a whole during the 2008-09 season is, to date, equal to approximately 60 percent of average annual rainfall – a good increase on the 40 percent of the previous three years, but still well short of the amount necessary to ensure a normal harvest. Additionally, some key north-eastern areas have missed out on much of the rain hitting the rest of the country, seeing as little as 10 percent of their annual average.

As a result of the drought around one million people who are dependent on agricultural production for their livelihoods have been severely affected, with UN bodies warning in late 2008 that families in affected areas faced severe health risks. In September 2008 UN bodies launched a SYP 950m (USD 20m) drought appeal, which received no response from the international community.

Fuel subsidies bite

In addition to the severe consequences of a prolonged drought, the desperate plight of many farmers has been compounded by the government’s introduction of a new subsidies regime.

The government cut the subsidy on diesel fuel in May 2008, causing an overnight price jump of 250 percent from SYP 7 (USD 0.14) per litre to SYP 25 (USD 0.52) per litre. The price rise caused huge distress among farmers, greatly increasing the cost of pumping water around their lands, as well as transporting their produce to market.

“The diesel price rise increased the cost of irrigation, it increased the cost of transportation. It was a disaster for the farmers,” Waficca Hussin Hussni, deputy director of the government-affiliated NAPC, said.

Farmers felt the effect of the price increase instantaneously.

“We met some farmers in the north-eastern part of Syria and they said that they stopped irrigating wheat as the cost increased just two or three weeks before the harvest,” Salim Zahouch, assistant representative for the FAO in Syria, said.

Younes Berho, a farmer from the Raqqa region, told Syria Today that he was forced to use his crop of red peppers as animal feed because he could not afford to transport his harvest to the market in Aleppo. Previously, he made a profit of between SYP 150,000 (USD 3,157) and SYP 200,000 (USD 4,210) per year off his pepper harvest.

“I couldn’t afford to send the peppers to Aleppo, so I fed them to the sheep instead,” Berho said. “That way I still made SYP 5,000 from it, otherwise I would have made a loss.”

The government has sought to offset the dramatic increase in fuel prices through the provision of special coupons, allowing the poorest families to buy 1,000 litres of diesel at SYP 9 (USD 0.19) per litre. This programme, however, was intended to cover home heating costs and is available to every Syrian household. In interviews with Syria Today, most farmers said they were using dried sheep and cow dung as heating fuel to preserve their diesel allocation for agricultural production.

In March, the government also cut the price of diesel to SYP 20 (USD 0.42) per litre, a 20 percent reduction. A further measure of support included last year’s introduction of direct cash payments of SYP 3,000 (USD 63) per hectare for farmers growing water-intensive – and thus diesel-thirsty – crops such as cotton. This year the government has expanded its payment scheme to also help farmers cover fuel and fertilizer costs.

The government has also moved to compensate farmers for the rise in fuel prices by increasing the price it pays for certain crops. The price of one kilo of wheat rose from SYP 13.5 (USD 0.28) to SYP 20 (USD 0.42), for example.

However, farmers interviewed by Syria Today in the Jazeera region in the north-east of the country said these measures were insufficient to cover the combined effects of the drought and the rise in diesel prices. The government’s recent move to liberalise the price of chemical fertilizers, another crucial agricultural input, has added further expense to their costs with prices rising from SYP 450 (USD 9.50) to SYP 900 (USD 19) per 50kg.

The worry for the government is that farmers, unable to survive financially and faced with extreme rural poverty, are now abandoning their land and migrating towards the cities in search of work. While there are no clear figures on the number of departing farmers to date, it is a trend the government acknowledges, although it maintains it is only temporary and brought on by the drought, rather than the rise in fuel prices.

“There is a lack of financial resources which is a really serious problem,” Alfredo Impiglia, acting representative of the FAO, said. “The cost of living is increasing dramatically and this increase is not matched by the incomes of the farmers. The farming inputs cost more so their profits become lower. Government employees had a salary increase to compensate for the increase in the cost of living, but farmers didn’t have anything and their costs went up. They face serious problems in maintaining their farms.”

One farmer, who asked not be named, used to farm eight dunams of land outside Raqqa. He told Syria Today that he has stopped farming after diesel prices increased and his daily irrigation costs rose to an unaffordable SYP 5,000 (USD 105). At the time of the interview last month, he was preparing to move to Damascus to look for work.

“I’ll go to Lebanon, to Damascus, to hell… I’ll go look for work elsewhere,” he said.

Utilisation of resources

In the face of climatic and economic challenges, the need for reform of farming techniques has become clearer than ever.

“The problem is that [Syrian farmers] have to understand that they have to preserve the natural resources they have,” Impiglia said. “We need to put an emphasis on the proper utilisation of resources.”

Most importantly, Impiglia pointed to the urgent need for better irrigation techniques to preserve and better utilise water supplies.

Across the country modern irrigation techniques remain limited, with 40 percent of farmers still dependent on rainwater and many using flood irrigation rather than the more efficient drip and sprinkler irrigation systems.

Education remains another key goal of Syrian agricultural policy makers. Many farmers engage in poor farming practices – overusing water and fertilizers and not practising crop rotation – which impacts upon their production, costs and the environment. The government says that with the support of other organisations, it is seeking to spread modern farming practices. The FAO, for instance, has established 200 agriculture schools across the country, serving more than 2,000 farmers.

“We stay with them for an entire cropping season and tell them what to do, mixing the indigenous methods of the farmers with the more scientific knowledge provided by our people,” Impiglia explained.

Yet progress is slow, hampered by a lack of education, isolation and, crucially, the small size of farm holdings in Syria, which are constantly being reduced by inheritances which split land holdings between numerous family members.

Hussni said small landholdings are one of the main obstacles impeding agricultural reform.

“The negative impact of dividing land into small holdings affects all costs and the government now faces lots of problems, especially in trying to move to new irrigation systems,” she said. “The cost increases if the holdings are small.”

In contrast to the difficulties faced by cereal farmers, the country’s production of fruit and vegetables is flourishing, especially in the coastal region. Syria has also become the world’s sixth largest olive producer. With the implementation of the right reforms, many believe that the sector as a whole can enjoy similar success.

“The potential is there, but we have to organise things in order to boost the sector,” Impiglia said.