Farmers in Syria’s North Face Dire Situation

When the Syrian regular forces entered Hama, Idlib and the countryside of Aleppo province, not only did they force many residents to run for their lives, they destroyed the economic infrastructure by burning down stores and laying waste to agricultural lands.
Abu Muhammad, who fled from the countryside in Aleppo province to the Kalas refugee camp in Turkey, says tanks and other military vehicles drove through wheatfields, destroying half-grown crops. There are no estimates for the scale of this kind of damage.
The most recent World Bank report on Syria, dating from 2010, says that agriculture accounts for 20 per cent of gross domestic product – or 28 per cent according to the agriculture ministry – and employs a fifth of the labour force.
The agricultural sector is suffering, and the security situation is not solely to blame. The United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organisation issued a press release in March saying that cereal production in Syria had fallen by ten per cent year on year due to “late and erratic rains”. It warned that poor security conditions might exacerbate the hardship facing some 300,000 small farmers in northeast Syria.
Jamil Issa, a farmer from the province of Al-Hassaka in the northeast, complains that the government has not granted farmers adequate agricultural loans and has reduced the effective size of farmland. Since 2008, the government has started banning farmers from planting all their land with cotton or wheat. The measure is designed to economise on water resources. The government issues loans and subsidised diesel and fertilisers only for these reduced areas, but many farmers are not complying with the order.
If things remain as they are, Issa expects to lose 40 per cent of the profit he made last year. He also fears that the government will compel farmers to sell their wheat crop to the state, and then fail to pay them because of its budget deficit.
“I’m also scared that our crops will be burnt before the harvest season,” Issa said. “This regime will do anything; it will extend its control by creating tensions in areas that it hasn’t entered yet.”
Syrian security forces have yet to move into Al-Hassaka, regarded as one of the country’s most important agricultural zones. Even now, though, the province’s economy is nearly paralysed. The main cause is spiraling prices of agricultural inputs, principally diesel fuel and fertilizers, which have become scarce. Some farmers accuse pro-regime suppliers of stockpiling fuel and fertilisers as economic sanctions reduce availability.
Issa said fertiliser prices on the black market had gone up 25 per cent. The government-owned daily Tishreen reported last April that the amounts of subsidized fertilizer distributed to farmers in the northeastern province of Raqqa leaves them short of 25 to 40 percent of their actual need. Farmers are resorting to merchants in the private sector, who charge as much as 110 percent more than the price offered by the government, according to the Syrian daily.
Syrians complain that diesel is in short supply both as tractor fuel and for domestic heating. Issa says prices have risen from 20 to 35 Syrian pounds a litre.
“This price increase, coupled with a fixed price for wheat, will significantly reduce profit margins for farmers,” he added.
Another farmer, Imad Resho, complains that fertiliser has not been delivered on time.
“Fertiliser was supposed to be made available to every farmer since February, but we only received it in April, and even then in very small amounts,” he said. “If farmers hadn’t stockpiled small amounts of fertiliser from last year, the situation would have been far worse.”
Resho said it was also essential to provide farmers with diesel, as the cotton and wheat harvesting seasons were approaching.
Farmers are not alone in complaining of inflation in Al-Hassaka. Kari Saeed, a foodstuff supplier, says the crisis is affecting the whole country as well as this province.
“Merchants say the crisis stems from the Syrian pound’s loss of value against the US dollar, but even after the exchange rate improved slightly, prices remained high,” he said. “The only people who benefit from high prices are merchants who have stocked up on these commodities and are now selling them at exorbitant prices.
“Consumers are only buying basic items because of the high prices. Some people may be earning higher profits, but in current conditions, in a time of revolution, this looks like treason and manipulation.”