Agriculture & Environment

A domain connecting crops, rainfall, water, livestock, and food security in one updateable picture.

Wheat follows the rain — except in war years

Syrian wheat moves with rainfall: in the 2008 drought just 228 mm fell and production dropped to about 2.1 million tonnes; wetter 2023 (385 mm) brought it back to 3.1 million.

But rain alone does not explain everything: 2018 saw 447 mm — far above average — yet production stayed at 1.2 million tonnes, the mark of conflict on planted area and irrigation. Hover over the chart to compare years.

Where does the war live inside the wheat number?

Production = harvested area × yield. Decomposing the figure separates two different effects: yield follows the rainy season and recovers quickly, while area is the structural loss — averaging 1.26 million hectares in 2015–2024 against 1.69 million in the pre-war decade, and never returning to that level. That is why average production sits at 2.2 million tonnes against 4.2 million before the war.

Even the 2018 puzzle resolves on the agricultural calendar: most of 2018's high calendar-year rain (447 mm) fell in its autumn — after the dry 2017/18 growing season that produced the lowest yield since 1990 (1,115 kg/ha) — and the same rains then fed the 2019 harvest: 2,293 kg/ha and 3.1 million tonnes. Co-movement is not causation, and the rainfall values are an unweighted mean of governorate points.

All three wheat series carry FAOSTAT's official observation flag (A) throughout 1990–2024.

Explore the data yourself

An interactive dashboard on real data (FAOSTAT, NASA): pick a governorate, crop, or period from the filter bar, and download any chart as an image or CSV from its menu.