‘Zero season’: Syrian farmers face worst drought in decades

DARAA/HASAKAH/PARIS — “I won’t plant a single dunam next year—it’s a losing business,” farmer Farhad Ahmad Sinjar said. For the past two years, he has watched his land produce less and less, parched by lack of rain. Now, he is giving up “the trade of our fathers and grandfathers.” 

This year, Sinjar planted 150 dunams of irrigated wheat, and 150 more of rain-fed barley on his land in Ilejagh, a village outside the northern Syrian city of Kobani (Ain al-Arab). He sowed 50 more dunams of summer vegetables: eggplants, peppers, cucumbers and tomatoes. The barley did not grow well—too little rain—and he sold the crop early for livestock farmers to graze their flocks. These days, he is harvesting his wheat. 

When Syria Direct spoke with Sinjar on June 10, he hoped the Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria (AANES)—which administers the area where he lives—would set a high price for wheat: $500 per ton, rather than the $310 it paid last year. 

The next day, the AANES set its price at $420 per ton of wheat, which includes a direct subsidy of $70. Around the same time, the Damascus government announced it would buy top quality durum wheat at $320 a ton, with an extra incentive of $130 per ton bringing the price to $450 for grain delivered to the Syrian Grain Establishment. 

Sinjar already lost $5,000 on his failed barley crop, and selling his wheat for anything less than $500 per ton means “we will lose” more, he said. 

In Daraa province, hundreds of kilometers south, farmer Muhammad al-Basiri gambled this year. He only sowed rain-fed wheat, going without irrigated potatoes, tomatoes and eggplants. He hoped to save on the cost of water, and thought production would be good. Instead, he was shocked by a “zero season” and suffered huge losses. “The wheat didn’t grow as it usually does,” he said. “The plants only reached 10 centimeters.” 

Like Sinjar, al-Basiri, who has grown wheat for 30 years, sold his failed crop for livestock grazing after losing hope that enough rain would come to his drought-stricken area. Even local artesian wells have run dry, he told Syria Direct. 

Because the rains came late this growing season, al-Basiri could only plant wheat at the end of December—a full month behind schedule—and only sowed 40 dunams, half of what he usually grows.

Between renting the land, buying seeds, plowing and weeding, he spent SYP 44 million this year ($4,400 at the parallel market exchange rate), only making back SYP 600,000 ($60). 

Syria’s cumulative rainfall during the first quarter of 2025 was a scant 94.9 millimeters, the lowest level since 1997 and well below the average of 165.4 millimeters for the same period between 1989 and 2015, according to the United Nations’ Food and Agriculture organization (FAO). The amount of rain was also far below the historical average of between 192.8 and 298 millimeters in the first third of the year between 2019 and 2024.

FAO satellite monitoring shows a sharp deterioration in plant cover during the 2024-2025 growing season, compared to previous years. This year’s exceptional decrease in rainfall, decline in production and poor plant health leaves farmers grappling with their losses and Syria facing the threat of food shortages.

Sheep graze Muhammad al-Basiri’s wheat field in Daraa province in April, after his crop failed due to lack of rain, 17/4/2025 (Emad Albasiri/Syria Direct)

Northeastern Syria: Enormous losses

At the start of the season, Jawan Muhammad Othman, a farmer from the Qamishli countryside village of Karbawi, planted 500 dunams of wheat at a total cost of $13,000. Planting the same amount of barley cost $10,000, while an additional 100 dunams of lentils cost $1,000. For these crops, he planned to rely on the rain. When too little fell, he lost everything he invested: $24,000. 

Othman did not solely rely on the rain, however. He sowed 10 dunams of irrigated wheat, 30 dunams of irrigated barley and 20 dunams of beans, at a total cost of around $3,500. But he could only water these crops “sparingly” for lack of fuel to run pumps, and as a result “they didn’t produce either,” he told Syria Direct. Like many other farmers, he turned his fields into pasture for grazing sheep. 

“My losses are nothing compared to farmers with vast areas,” Othman added. “One farmer in our village lost $100,000, and another lost $200,000. The crops didn’t grow.” 

“The sight of yellow farmland without crops is shocking, frightening. Thousands of dunams have been spoiled in Derik [al-Malikiya], and never grew at all,” said Saleh Haj Khalil, 50, a farmer from the Derik area village of Robar, in northeastern Hasakah. “Some were not even suitable as pasture,” he told Syria Direct.

Typically, Haj Khalil grows chickpeas, alongside both rain-fed and irrigated wheat and barley. But the first three months of the season—November to January—did not bring the necessary rain, so he only sowed wheat and barley. Other farmers in the area did the same, growing no more than one percent of the usual amount of chickpeas in Derik, he estimated.

Last year, each dunam of Haj Khalil’s irrigated wheat fields produced between three and five sacks of grain, each weighing between 90 and 110 kilograms. This year, local farmers produced only 1.5 sacks per dunam, he said. 

His rain-fed wheat “grew to around 10 centimeters, then stopped growing,” though “Derik’s lands are known for being fertile and productive,” the farmer added. This season is “the worst in 50 years.” 

On top of the lack of rain, farmers who irrigate their crops struggled to provide the fuel needed to operate water pumps. Two farmers in northeastern Syria told Syria Direct that subsidized fuel provided to farmers by the AANES were insufficient and delayed. 

Othman received four 800-liter barrels of subsidized mazot (diesel) in four batches at a price of SYP 1,350 ($0.13) per liter. This amount was not enough to water his crops, forcing him to buy 3,000 additional liters of market-rate mazot at prices ranging from SYP 4,300 ($0.43) to SYP 6,500 ($0.65) per liter, he said.

While he faced similar challenges with lack of rain and fuel in 2024, Othman’s profits “were relatively good last year,” a far cry from this year’s disastrous growing season.

Sinjar also struggled to provide enough fuel to irrigate his crops. He received four 900-liter batches of mazot for his wheat, which he used to water his crop three times, and had to buy 2,000 more liters from the market for four additional waterings. 

A combine harvests wheat in the Jabal Kawkab villages near Syria’s northeastern Hasakah city, 10/6/2025 (Sozdar Muhammad/Syria Direct)

Rain-fed wheat in Daraa: Zero production

In the western Daraa countryside, Mahmoud Muhammad al-Sweidani planted his 250 dunams of land with irrigated wheat and barley, also avoiding planting chickpeas this year due to a lack of rain and water. The current season is “the worst since I started farming in 2003, with the low production of irrigated crops and virtually no rain-fed” crop production, he said. 

Each dunam of irrigated wheat al-Sweidani grew this year produced between 200 and 250 kilograms, down from between 300 and 500 in past years, he told Syria Direct. 

Al-Sweidani relies on water from dams and artesian wells for his crops, but this season “there’s no water in the dams due to the lack of rain, and the irrigation networks have stopped because there aren’t enough water reserves,” he said. “Most of the wells in my area have also dried up, so we cut back on the number of waterings.” 

Read more: In thirsty Daraa, uncontrolled well drilling drives groundwater deeper

Like his fellow farmers in the northeast, al-Sweidani had trouble securing fuel to draw water from local wells, driving his production costs up higher than previous years. Fuel subsidies in former regime-held areas like Daraa have been halted since Assad fell in December 2024. 

Rain-fed agriculture fared no better, with most farmers forced to abandon their crops for livestock grazing, since “production was nonexistent, and the crop couldn’t be harvested because it was too short,” farmer Nasser al-Awdatallah, 57, from the western Daraa town of Nawa, said. 

Over the past seven years, al-Awdatallah gradually reduced the area of land he cultivated to 50 dunams of wheat, barley and chickpeas as the agricultural sector declined. But the current season was “the worst,” he told Syria Direct. “I haven’t seen anything like it in 30 years. The plants grew partially, then stopped. My land’s production is zero.” 

“Rain-fed crops cultivated in successive seasons [in the same fields] yielded nothing, while rain-fed lands that had been fallow produced at most a quarter of their usual yield,” al-Awdatallah said. This season saw four rainfalls, each bringing no more than 10-15 millimeters of rain, “which is not enough.” 

Farmers like al-Awdatallah also faced the problem of late rains at the start of the season, a challenge that has continued for five years, linked to the climate change that is hitting the region. 

A wheat harvest in the countryside of Sheikh Miskeen, a city in northern Daraa, 5/6/2025 (Emad Albasiri/Syria Direct)

What is damaging the wheat? 

Insufficient rainfall and high temperatures “accelerate wheat’s growth stages, reducing the nutrient absorption period and shortening the tillering and flowering phases, thus reducing the number of spikes and grains,” Aboud Ibrahim (a pseudonym), an agricultural engineer from Syria’s northeastern Raqqa city, said. Increased “water stress, especially during the flowering and grain-filling stages, weakens productivity,” he added. 

Rain-fed wheat needs 250-350 millimeters of annual rainfall as a minimum for “acceptable productivity,” Ibrahim said. But in recent years, “this amount is less effective due to rising temperatures and increased evaporation, which increase the amount of water the crop needs.” 

“Large temperature differences between night and day, and heat waves during the flowering phase, damage the flowers and reduce grain setting [the period when fertilized flowers develop into grains], impacting grain quality and fullness,” he added. Temperature fluctuations increase “stress on the plant, and reduce its physiological efficiency.” 

The introduction of new wheat varieties to Syria that are not compatible with local environmental conditions has also led to “a clear decline in agricultural production,” Derik-based agricultural engineer Kina Muhammad Ali told Syria Direct. New varieties spread widely among farmers because they are sold at lower prices than local varieties. 

Read more: Seeds of Syria: How a birthplace of agriculture lost troves of its native crops, and why we should all worry

“Worsening drought and climate change in northeastern Syria have led to a marked deterioration in agricultural soil quality, alongside a sharp drop in the groundwater table and a significant decline in bodies of water,” Ali said. This leads to “increasing difficulties in irrigating crops, and a significant increase in agricultural costs, negatively impacting the productivity—in terms of both quantity and quality—of staple crops such as wheat and barley.” 

While Syria faces water scarcity, farmers still use traditional irrigation methods that “waste large amounts of water,” she added. Another factor is “low efficiency fertilizer use, whether in quantity or type, which negatively affects crop quality and productivity.” 

In the south, Daraa province has seen a marked change in rain distribution patterns. “The start of the rainy season is delayed, with rains concentrated in January and February, and stopping at the start of April” in recent years, agricultural engineer Muhammad al-Khariba said. In the past, “rains continued into May,” he added from his home in western Daraa. 

“The damage is obvious and significant in rain-fed crops, with virtually no production, except for lands that had good cultivation conditions last year—such as those that were planted with vegetables and irrigated until December, or fallow land that was not planted last year and then plowed well,” he added. 

Drought can be seen on the land itself across Syria. Plant cover is reduced, particularly in northeastern Syria, which—along with the fertile southern Houran plain in Daraa—is one of the country’s most important food baskets. This, too, is due to lack of rain, al-Khariba said. 

“When rain falls, the seeds of the natural plant cover begin to grow, but with the lack of rain this season, these plants did not reach the stage of flowering and forming new seeds,” he said. The plants dried up before going to seed, meaning that “the plant died before it was born.” 

While there is still a bank of seeds in the soil from past years, “if the drought continues into the coming years, these seeds will run out, resulting in a deterioration of the vegetation cover,” al-Khariba added. 

A farmer inspects wheat spikes on his land in the Jabal Kawkab villages east of Syria’s northeastern Hasakah city, 10/6/2025 (Sozdar Muhammad/Syria Direct)

Turning away from farming

After this season’s heavy losses, farmers’ plan for next year depends on “the rains,” al-Awdatallah said. There are no solutions, especially for those who rely on rain-fed agriculture, who make up “the largest segment of farmers in the Houran.” 

“The crops we grow, wheat and barley, are the traditional and historically successful crops on the Houran plain. They are suited to the nature of the land and the region’s climate,” al-Awdatallah said. “There is no point in changing crops.” 

But Al-Sweidani, who relies on irrigated agriculture, is considering “changing crops, or stopping irrigated farming and switching to planting suitable rain-fed varieties, if the current situation remains the same next season.” 

The Daraa Agricultural Directorate estimates the current season’s production at around 15,000 tons of irrigated wheat and “zero” rain-fed wheat. Last season brought in 104,000 tons of wheat in total—30,000 irrigated tons and 74,000 rain-fed. This puts the current season’s production at 14 percent of what it was last year, according to figures Syria Direct obtained from the directorate. 

Irrigated wheat suffered 50 percent losses, while rain-fed wheat and barley were a complete loss of 100 percent, a directorate spokesperson said. Rain-fed crops were used for grazing instead, and “no government support was provided to the farmers,” he added. The question of whether to compensate for their losses is up to the central government. 

The FAO, for its part, has provided financial support to around 600 irrigated wheat farmers in Daraa, the source added. 

In the face of drought and climate change, the directorate has developed “a proposed production plan for next season that takes drought into account and relies on cultivating crops with lower water needs, and drought-tolerant varieties,” he added. 

This year’s crop faced more challenges than drought alone, however. “The quality is inferior,” Muammar Arrar, a grain trader in Nawa, western Daraa, said. He pointed to the spread of the sunn pest—an insect that feeds on wheat and barley—which, alongside the lack of rain, caused significant losses. 

“The agricultural and informational units did not carry out their duties properly this year, such as launching a campaign to combat the sunn pest, nor did they raise farmers’ awareness about the need to control it,” he added. 

Poor crop quality primarily impacts farmers, who face difficulty in “supplying wheat to government silos, which require specific quality specifications,” Arrar told Syria Direct. “A large percentage of the wheat crop is rejected for not meeting specifications and standards,” he added, leaving farmers to sell on the market for “low prices.” 

Arrar called on Syrian authorities to “take the farmer’s situation this season into account, because the losses are enormous,” calling for “a margin of tolerance when analyzing wheat samples, overlooking a percentage of sunn pest strike,” which he estimated includes around 20 percent of Daraa’s total production this year. 

Drought impacts

Over years of war, Syria’s farming sector faced significant damages and extensive encroachments, leaving it fragile and unable to cope with new shocks, such as worsening  drought and the effects of climate change. 

Syrian farmers rely primarily on rain-fed agriculture, which made up 78 percent of the country’s cultivated land area in 2022. Irrigated farmland is concentrated along the Euphrates River, the water level of which has fallen due to Turkey’s control of dams upstream. 

While climate change is a global phenomenon, “Syria and eastern Mediterranean basin countries are more severely affected,” Abdulrahman al-Sharida, an isotope hydrology expert from Daraa province, said. “Climate change in eastern Mediterranean basin countries is about 30 percent more intense than other parts of the world, as indicated by global studies,” he added, because “weather front systems stall at the borders of Greece to the west and at the edges of the Indian Ocean to the east.” 

“The rainy season began to shift in the 1990s, and rainfall rates decreased. September, October and November—which once accounted for 30 percent of the annual average—became virtually dry months. Now, rainfall is concentrated in January and February,” al-Sharida explained. 

The intensity of rainfall has also changed. “Rain showers have become short, which negatively affects water infiltration and groundwater replenishment” and also harms wheat and barley farming, he added.

In parallel with climate impacts on rainfall, increased air and soil temperatures lead to “a substantial increase in evaporation, which puts significant stress on soil moisture and, in turn, stresses vegetation.” 

The effects of this year’s drought can be clearly observed in the natural and artificial bodies of water in Daraa province, as water levels in dams have dropped significantly. 

“Due to the low rainfall this year, which affected most provinces in the country…there is no water storage in all the dams of the Yarmouk Basin in Daraa this year,” Hani al-Abdullah, the head of the Daraa Water Resources Directorate, said.

“Inflow to the dams was limited to recycled water from last year in some dams,” he told Syria Direct. “The storage percentage in Daraa dams this year did not exceed four percent of the total capacity.”

“By monitoring the water situation in the province, specifically tracking and measuring spring flow rates as well as annual rainfall, a significant decline in flow and a noticeable drop in groundwater levels has been observed since the late 20th century,” al-Abdullah said. This decline coincided with “a cycle of climatic drought and a sharp decrease in rainfall over the past decades,” which this year did “not exceed 30 percent [of the average] in most areas.” 

Drinking water sources for most population centers have also been affected. Springs used for water, such as the Oyoun al-Abed, Zayzoun and the Greater and Lesser Sakhinat, have dried up, al-Abdullah said. Others, the al-Ashaari, Ain Dhikr, al-Safouqiya and Ghazala springs, have declined. The groundwater levels of some wells have fallen, while others have run dry. 

Water expert al-Sharida noted there is a “direct relationship between climate change and water resources.” In other words, “drought means that the amount of water flowing to surface and groundwater sources is practically nonexistent, which leads to the drying of many [seasonal] streambeds and springs, as well as severe stress and depletion of groundwater.” 

In an effort to mitigate drought impacts, the water resources directorate worked on a plan to “rescue winter crops—most important of which are wheat, potatoes, fodder crops and early-season crops—by providing several waterings for them using available reserves from Daraa’s dams,” as well as drawing water from dams in neighboring Quneitra, al-Abdullah said. 

“We are amending the agricultural plan according to the available water resources, and coordinating with the Farmers’ Union in Daraa to not carry out any summer plantings on the dam irrigation networks, in parallel with a campaign against water and electrical encroachments [by residents] in western Daraa,” he added. The aim is to “improve the situation of electricity feeding pumping stations for drinking and irrigation, and to maintain continuous pumping to take advantage of available water resources as much as possible.”

Farmland in the Jabal Kawkab villages east of Hasakah, planted with rain-fed wheat that did not grow well due to the lack of rain, 10/6/2026 (Sozdar Muhammad/Syria Direct)

Coping with drought

“Limited strategic planning and a weak response to climate challenges—such as severe drought—are main challenges,” agricultural engineer Ali said. “There are no clear plans to adapt to climate change or promote sustainable agriculture, which leaves farmers facing accumulating challenges that worsen year after year.”

“There is an urgent need to shift towards sustainable agriculture systems, especially in an environment characterized by scarce water resources and harsh climate conditions,” Ali said. She underscored the need to “adopt innovative farming strategies that take the optimal use of water and soil into account, while reevaluating traditional agricultural methods and adopting effective practices that boost productivity without harming the environment to ensure the sustainability of agriculture and food security over the long term.” 

Sustainable agricultural systems play a “pivotal role” in mitigating the effects of drought and confronting the challenges of climate change by “adopting thoughtful agricultural practices based on the optimal use of resources, alongside raising awareness among farmers of the importance of sustainable agriculture,” she said.

“Technical and financial support must also be provided to farmers, and modern water-saving irrigation techniques adopted, which enhance the ability to sustain production despite scarce resources,” she added. This is in addition to “promoting biodiversity and using natural pesticides and organic substances effectively, since they are basic tools that improve soil health and crop quality.” 

In drought conditions, “we look for crops that require very little water, but the crops we are used to are wheat and barley, really have low water requirements,” agricultural engineer al-Khariba said. “New research must be conducted at Syrian research centers to develop new, more drought-resistant varieties, so the seeds can grow in the event there is little rainfall, like this year.” 

Al-Khariba expected farmers to focus on barley in the coming year, “since it tolerates drought more than wheat, unless new drought-resistant varieties of wheat are provided.”

On a broader level, it is necessary to “mitigate the effects of climate change by reducing car, industry and factory emissions, which cause global warming and rising temperatures,” al-Khariba said. It is also crucial to “stop the depletion of groundwater through the indiscriminate digging of artesian wells, especially those dug near springs and natural water sources.” 

He called on the Syrian government to work on a roadmap to “harvest rainwater by establishing artificial dams and lakes on flood channels, taking advantage of heavy rains that could happen in some parts of the country by storing it for later use in agriculture.” 

He pointed to the example of home water harvesting practiced by some residents in neighboring Jordan, where water is also scarce. There, residents divert rainwater collected on rooftops to underground water tanks for use in washing, cleaning floors and watering plants. 

Ibrahim, the agricultural engineer in Raqqa, recommended that farmers use “drip irrigation technology, or low-pressure spray irrigation, to reduce waste.” He also advised farmers to use “smart irrigation schedules, based on soil moisture and crop growth.”

This report was originally published in Arabic and translated into English by Mateo Nelson.