Sectoral impact:
Syria ranks 6th globally in the November 2024–May 2025 Hunger Hotspot Outlook. 14.56 million people are food insecure, of whom 9.1 million are classified as acutely food insecure (including 1.3 million severely food insecure), and 5.4 million are at risk of hunger.
The food security situation has further worsened since December 2024, with displacement across the country, increasing returns across borders, currency fluctuation, increased prices for agriculture inputs, and liquidity challenges affecting personal finances and businesses alike. There has been a sharp rise in the cost of living, with minimum wage covering only 18 per cent of the food MEB component, coupled with limited income generation opportunities and delays in salary payments. These are all contributing factors pushing households into severe food insecurity and to resort to extreme negative coping strategies, such as relying on debt, selling assets, or sending children to work to meet basic needs.
There is an alarming deterioration of food consumption patterns and a reduction in dietary diversity as households sharply reduce access to nutritious diets. Vulnerable populations, particularly women and children, bear the brunt of food insecurity, with intra-household food allocation practices often prioritizing men, leaving women and children with limited access to nutritious food. The planned subsidy removal on bread further worsens food insecurity situation for the most vulnerable.
The current 2024/2025 cropping season in Syria is generally poor and below average. The most recent phase of the armed conflict coincided with the 2024-2025 planting season. The uncertainty, displacement and logistical difficulties associated with the conflict contributed to a situation where only 56 per cent of the planned irrigated area was planted as of January 2025 (around 323,000 hectares), while an estimated 58 per cent of the planned (lower yielding) land in rain-fed areas is being cultivated this season (around 500,000 hectares). The conflict is coupled with erratic rainfall that is significantly below long-term averages, and an increase in prices of agriculture production inputs.
Failure to support the current wheat season and preparedness for the successive 2025/26 wheat cropping season will seriously undermine food security at local and national level, especially with wheat production during recent seasons being 30-40 per cent below the pre-crisis average. Wheat shortages and/or high prices will prevail, further increasing the humanitarian caseload.
In addition to conflict-related disruptions, Syria is facing climate-induced shocks, including droughts and water scarcity, which significantly undermine rangelands productivity. Moreover, the current situation possesses major risks for herders to access critical grazing resources as most areas remain inaccessible or are contaminated with explosive remnants of war, forcing herders into competition over scarce and limited grazing resources in the few accessible areas. Accordingly, there is a need to enhance the survival of core breeding animals through provision of animal feeds, vaccination and animal health services to save core breeding animals and to enhance the required milk production for household use.
In addition, dependence on foreign trade and centralized services has left the food system vulnerable to disruptions. Local food production is unable to compete, worsened by trade restrictions, and thereby further hindering food access.
Environmental, economic, and social pressures have eroded resilience at both the household and community levels, making it progressively harder for populations to recover from or adapt to escalating food insecurity. Conflict has destroyed infrastructure, and widespread displacement has left millions without access to food, deepening the crisis.
Considering the rising needs and the bleak funding outlook for 2025, there will be a significant impact on both regular food assistance and agriculture-livelihood activities across Syria. The food security situation for the most vulnerable households is expected to deteriorate further, due to layoffs of hundreds of thousands of government employees, military and police personnel as part of the restructuring of government institutions.
Immediate needs:
- Emergency food assistance for displaced households and those in conflict areas or hosting centres, as coping mechanisms are nearing exhaustion.
- Continue assisting severely food insecure households and scale-up food assistance to those at risk of severe food insecurity.
- The bread and bakery sector in Syria faces several persistent challenges, including rising input prices, instability in exchange rates, low quality and quantity control in bakeries, and a significant funding gap for bakery support. The movement of returnees has increased demand for bread in certain areas, making access to and affordability of bread inconsistent across the country, which requires support in the form of bakery assistance through the provision of raw materials to support a steady supply of affordable bread.
- Critical and time-sensitive emergency agriculture-livelihood support, including financial aid and in-kind assistance, is required to stabilize farming and livestock-keeping households that have exhausted their savings and are resorting to extreme coping mechanisms. This includes the provision of animal feed and animal health services to protect core livestock breeding stock and other services to livestock-keeping households, and access to fertilizers and water to boost production. It also includes the rehabilitation of critical water resources in grazing areas to enhance water availability for herders.
- Conflict-sensitive rehabilitation of all damaged infrastructure, including but not limited to irrigation infrastructure, to maximise agricultural production during the summer season. This facilitates a bounce-back after a damaged winter season in the country, while promoting social cohesion.
Priority activities:
- Provide emergency food assistance and bread support through appropriate modalities to the displaced and affected 2.4 million people in need of food assistance up to 6 months in shelters and final destinations.
- Provide lifesaving, targeted food assistance to 2.9 million severely food insecure and at risk of food insecurity households across Syria, with special attention to vulnerable populations, particularly women and children. Concurrently, invest in emergency agricultural inputs for these vulnerable populations, such as seeds, fertilizers, fuel, and harvesting equipment, and animal feed, vaccines and treatment against parasites to support agriculture-based livelihoods and mitigate the impact of recent disruptions on farm-based economic activity in both the winter and summer seasons.
- Rehabilitate damaged infrastructure, including irrigation systems, bread value chain and other facilities critical for wheat. Support bakeries with raw materials to protect and increase their capacity to produce affordable bread.
- Immediately invest in the timely generation of quality evidence-based data and analysis to guide and inform emergency and recovery programming. This will focus on conducting in-depth analysis to bridge critical evidence gaps, inform policy and emergency programming, and modernize agricultural strategies. It includes updating agroecological zoning data in view of targeting support to returning population.
- Enhance stakeholder capacity to reduce food waste and loss along value chains, thereby improving overall food security.
- Promote a humanitarian-development-peace (HDP) and localisation approach as a cornerstone for investment in food production, climate-resilient agricultural practices, and improve access to farming tools and irrigation systems to restore agricultural productivity. This includes through income-generating opportunities to enhance and improve production/productivity: short-cycle vegetable and distribution of kits to help families restart production (poultry, beekeeping, mushroom, and pond aquaculture).
Response strategy:
The food security and agriculture (FSA) sector aims to address the immediate food needs of vulnerable populations, enhance their self-reliance, and contribute to restoring community resilience in Syria. This includes both short-term emergency assistance and long-term strategies to improve food security. The prerequisite to support the above action is facilitating a systematic process to generate timely and evidence–based data and analysis, to inform the targeted agriculture sector response (given over decade of working with limited data and information in the sector).
In the short term, FSA advocates for emergency aid to displaced households and those affected by recent political changes, targeting severely food-insecure populations. CVA is prioritized in areas with functional markets. Additionally, the sector supports the provision of critical and time-sensitive emergency agricultural inputs, such as seeds, feed, veterinary drugs and vaccines, emergency water for production to farming communities, and covering the entire agricultural value chain from production to marketing. The 2024 Food Security Assessment identified those most at risk of severe food insecurity, guiding the prioritization of current food assistance.
FSA aims to continue supporting bread and bakeries by providing raw materials and improving infrastructure, continue rehabilitating irrigation systems, rebuilding agriculture-based livelihoods in conflict-sensitive ways, promoting income generation, enhancing local food production, supporting livestock production and fisheries, offering agricultural extension services, and strengthening disaster risk reduction measures based on early warning systems and anticipatory action.
The sector emphasizes coordination at all levels to avoid overlap, improve complementarity, and fill assistance gaps. Standardized monitoring and assessment of relief and transitions (SMART) tools will be used to track assistance and prevent duplication at the household level. FSA will collaborate with other sectors like emergency livelihoods, WASH, nutrition, and health to address interconnected needs, and coordinate with CWGs. Partnering with the GBV AoR will strengthen responses to reduce GBV risks, focusing on women and girls.
The sector prioritizes AAP, protection, gender, and inclusion, focusing on women, children, PWDs and other vulnerable groups. The sector will deploy the HDP approach and localisation strategy to ensure the sustainability of actions towards building resilience of Syrian communities. The proposed FSA interventions will address the specific needs of different genders and age groups, with a focus on female-headed households and women of reproductive age. A community feedback mechanism will ensure transparency and feed into reducing community tensions, while monitoring and evaluation will adapt programs to evolving needs. FSA is committed to PSEA, with clear reporting mechanisms and PSEA training for staff. Protection principles will be integrated into food security interventions to ensure safe, dignified assistance and to address risks related to child protection and GBV.