Almost two years of civil war has devastated Syria’s once growing agricultural sector and rapidly created a food security crisis for its population of more than 22 million people, a United Nations mission found last week.
With 10% of the population already in need of food assistance, the blow taken by farming is expected to push the crisis even deeper, said Dominique Burgeon, director of the UN Food and Agriculture Organization’s (FAO) Emergency and Rehabilitation Division.
“In terms of food security, the coping strategies of many families are exhausted and they rely almost exclusively on food assistance. Our colleagues from WFP (the World Food Programme) are currently providing food assistance to 1.5 million people in Syria and are looking to further increase this number,” Burgeon told www.freshfruitportal.com.
“Within the 2013 Syria Humanitarian Action Response Plan (SHARP), FAO appealed for USD34.85 million to help small-scale farmers and herders in need of emergency agriculture assistance. This includes seeds, fertilizer, animal feed, poultry production packages and veterinary drugs. These proposed activities remain largely unfunded.”
Burgeon described a vibrant agricultural sector pre-conflict, comprised in large part by fruit production which accounted for 32% of output. In 2009, agriculture employed an estimated 17% of the population and generated 21% of the gross domestic product, the director said.
Once a net importer, Burgeon said Syria had recently achieved exporter status for products such as fruits, vegetables, cotton and other food products.
On the Jan. 18-22 mission to Damascus and the governorates of Homs and Dara’a, however, farming was found to be hanging by a thread.
Wheat and barley production had dropped to less than half of its typical level, while vegetable output decreased by 60% in Homs. Among other impeding factors, the mission found a lack of fuel, damage to major irrigation canals, and low access to agriculture inputs such as seeds and fertilizer.
Overall, only 45% of farmers had been able to fully harvest their crops; 14% of those who did not harvest attributed the issue to insecurity or lack of fuel.
Burgeon appealed for seeds, fertilizers, animal feed, veterinary drugs, poultry and rehabilitation of irrigation infrastructure to help the sector get back on its feet. In the long term, he said debt and the loss of assets could mean a large section of the population may never recover.
“From an economic perspective, the conflict has severely affected the food supply chain. On one side, production has been disrupted with a sharp reduction in the availability of locally produced food,” he said.
“The population is increasingly selling their productive and non-productive assets, incurring debts and substantially reducing essential expenditures and food consumption. As the crisis further deepens, the humanitarian needs of the population will become more and more acute.”
Burgeon asked the international community to scale up its efforts to develop a humanitarian response. He said SHARP will cost an estimated US$519 million, only 4% of which has been funded.
The FAO currently works in other conflict zones to alleviate similar agriculture crises. In Afghanistan, the organization supports local seed production. In the Democratic Republic of Congo, quality seeds, farming tools and technical training have been provided to assist production. The FAO also runs similar operations in Somalia, Yemen, Liberia, Sierra Leone, the Sudan and South Sudan.
Photo: Flickr, FreedomHouse
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