Syria's government has raised the price it pays local farmers for their wheat to 100 Syrian pounds ($0.212) a kg as it attempts to buy as much Syrian grain as possible, a government source said on Monday. The source, who did not give a figure for how much was targeted for buying this year, said harvesting of wheat had started while local buying would begin "within days".
Syria's General Organisation for Cereal Processing and Trade (Hoboob) is the state agency responsible for buying the country's wheat crop. Farmers were offered 60 pounds a kg in the 2015 season. "We aim to buy everything that is offered to Hoboob," the government source said. This year it has set up 29 collection centres across Syria to buy grain, down from around 140 before the civil war which has fractured state agricultural support systems.
Last year, farmers sold just over 450,000 tonnes of wheat, a fraction of the 1-1.5 million tonnes that is needed to provide enough bread to government-held areas of the country alone, government sources and traders said. Farmers have said the government agency is the only body capable of buying the wheat at suitable prices. The UN Food and Agriculture Organization has told Reuters that the area of land sown with wheat and barley for the 2015-2016 season has decreased to 2.16 million hectares, down from 2.38 million hectares the previous season and 3.125 million in 2010 before the war, and only around two-thirds of the area targeted by the government. Before the conflict Syria could produce 4 million tonnes of wheat in a good year, with around 2.5 million going to the state and the surplus exported.