Syria Country Book

Last update: December 2024

This page contains information about some of the data available in the FEWS NET Data Explorer (FDE) for Syria. This is not a comprehensive guide.

For information about using the filters and fields for specific domains in the FDE, see Choose a Data Domain.

Summary table

Country food security context

Statistical reporting units

Syria usually uses administrative units as their statistical reporting units.

Administrative (admin) units are the geographical areas into which a country is divided. FEWS NET uses the following terminology: National boundary = admin 0, First sub-national division = admin 1 (e.g., states in the United States), Second sub-national division = admin 2 (e.g., counties in the United States), and so on.

Admin 1: Governates/provinces/counties (Arabic muḥāfaẓāt, singular muḥāfaẓah)

Admin 2: Districts (manāṭiq, singular minṭaqah)

Admin 3: Sub-districts (nawāḥī, singular nāḥiyah)

Admin 4: Villages

Crop data

Explore our crop data.

View our documentation on using the Crop Domain.

Crop estimate data sources

The Ministry of Agriculture and Agrarian Reform (MOAAR) is the official source of all of Syria’s crop statistics. Note that an update to the national crop statistic web portal appears to be underway. 

Crop reporting units

For the period represented by the crop statistics found in the FEWSNET FDW, Syria’s crop statistics are reported using a hybrid assemblage of its 14 governorates and two other special purpose reporting entities.  For this reason, FEWS NET reports Syrian crop statistics using an “R” code (agricultural region reporting units) set of FNIDs.

The first special purpose entity is called the General Administration of the Euphrates Basin (G.A.D.E.B.) and reported crop statistics for a large hydrologically-defined project reporting region between 1982 and 2002, when it and other state-sponsored agricultural efforts were legislated out of existence. According to Myriam Babsa,

Between December 2000 and December 2001, the Syrian Ba’th party promulgated a series of political decisions (taqarir) that aimed at privatising the state farms in Syria. The main one, decision number 83 of 16 December 2000, put an end to 43 years of collectivist experiments in the field of land reform. The main region targeted by the decision 83 of 2000 was the Syrian North-East, the Jazîra, where the Euphrates Project, was implemented. According to decision 83, land was parcelled out in shares of 3 ha for irrigated land and 8 ha for non-irrigated land. It called for land to be distributed to, in order of priority, the former owners, the farm workers, and employees of the General Administration of the Euphrates Basin (GADEB).

The second non-administrative reporting entity is defined in official crop reporting as Assad Estates. Very little information is available to define the boundaries of this reporting unit, but it reported annual crop statistics between 1995 and 2002. There is no information available with which to note how its subsequent (post-2002) crop production was distributed among the 14 governorates. 

Year and season definition

The annual crop statistic reporting period is identified by the MOAAR as the calendar year (January 1 to December 31). 

The complete Syrian annual agricultural cycle begins, however, on September 1, and ends on August 31 of the following year, and is identified by FEWS NET as an end-aligned reporting period (production occurring within this period is associated with the year in which it is produced). 

 Example: Crops planted in 2022 and harvested in 2023 will be associated with 2023 data.

For the crops whose production is reported by season (potato, sugar beet, tomato), the following table displays the dates associated with their seasons:

Methodology

No information is available on the methodology used in Syrian crop production estimates.