Syrian Wheat Supply to Be Cut Further, as Country Battles Worsening Drought

Gro expects that wheat production in Syria will plunge this year as the Gro Drought Index shows worsening drought conditions in the country’s key wheat-growing regions. 

The last major drought, in 2014, caused wheat production to decline 37% year-over-year. Today’s conditions are much worse than 2014, and deteriorated significantly over the past several weeks as shown in the Gro Drought Index. The most recent drought of 2014 would be classified as a “severe” drought in wheat producing regions(averaging 2.69 on a scale of 0-5 during the month of June), whereas the drought of 2021 is squarely in the category of “extreme” drought and approaching”exceptional” drought (averaging 3.52 for the month of June to date, and still climbing) as shown in Gro’s Climate Risk Navigator for Agriculture.

Previous shortfalls in wheat production have required Syria to import large amounts of wheat, usually from Russia and Ukraine. However, both countries face pressure to curb food inflation domestically, and Russia has imposed a floating tax on all grain exports (the rate fluctuates weekly, and differs from item to item). Ukraine does not presently have controls on wheat exports. 

Gro’s Black Sea Wheat Yield Forecast Model, available to Gro Standard subscribers, can aid in forecasting import availability to Syria. Syria’s winter wheat is planted in October and harvested in June-July. Gro’s Climate Risk Navigator can aid both acreage and production forecasting efforts for the upcoming season. 

Most of Syria’s wheat production is centered in the Al-Hasakah, Aleppo, and Ar Raqqah regions, as seen in Gro’s land cover feature. 

This insight was powered by the Gro platform, which enables better and faster decisions about factors affecting the entire global agricultural ecosystem. Gro organizes over 40,000 datasets from sources around the world into a unified ontology, which allows users to derive valuable insights such as this one. You can explore the data available on Gro with a free account, or please get in touch if you would like to learn more about a specific crop, region, or business issue.