Syria: Wheat, Olive Agriculture and Metabolic Health

Syria’s food system once linked major wheat and barley regions with olive groves, fruit, vegetables, pulses and pastoral livelihoods. Years of conflict, displacement, drought and high input costs have damaged that system and interrupted care for diabetes, hypertension and other chronic diseases.

Syria at a glance

• Food-security crop: wheat is essential to the Syrian diet and agricultural economy.
• Agricultural heritage: olives, barley, pulses, fruit and vegetables vary across the country’s ecological zones.
• Current crisis: FAO reported severely below-average cereal production in 2025 after drought.
• Health-system pressure: WHO describes a system strained by conflict, workforce shortages and high out-of-pocket costs.
• Central need: restore food production and chronic-disease continuity together.

Wheat, barley and bread

Bread is culturally and nutritionally central. The public-health goal is not to condemn it, but to protect access while improving flour quality, fibre and meal diversity.

Pulses, vegetables, yogurt and olive oil make grain-based meals more complete. During shortages, monotonous refined-staple diets can meet calories while failing to provide adequate nutritional quality.

Olives and agricultural heritage

FAO highlights Syrian olives as an ancient crop grown across varied climatic zones. Olive groves support food, oil, rural income and landscape resilience.

Restoring orchards and processing facilities can rebuild livelihoods, but farmers also need fuel, water, credit, safe transport and functioning markets.

Diabetes and interrupted treatment

WHO previously reported that diabetes prevalence had risen markedly and that insulin shortages threatened hundreds of thousands of people. Conflict makes all forms of diabetes harder to manage, and type 1 diabetes becomes rapidly life-threatening without insulin.

Emergency plans must protect insulin cold chains, medicines, glucose testing, kidney care and appropriate food access.

Drought and recovery

Drought compounds conflict damage by reducing cereal yields and farm income. Efficient irrigation, drought-adapted seed and soil recovery can help, but agricultural rebuilding must reflect local ecology rather than impose one national formula.

Priorities for progress

1. Restore wheat, barley, olive and pulse production.
2. Protect insulin and essential NCD medicine supply chains.
3. Include diverse nutritious staples in humanitarian assistance.
4. Rebuild water, storage, transport and local markets.
5. Make safe water and unsweetened drinks routine defaults.
6. Re-establish surveillance and affordable primary care.

Key takeaway

Syria’s recovery requires more than calories and more than clinics. Agricultural restoration and uninterrupted diabetes care are inseparable parts of rebuilding metabolic health.

Selected authoritative sources

• WHO Health Cluster: Syria
• WHO: Diabetes patients in Syria
• FAO GIEWS country brief: Syria
• FAO: Syrian olive heritage

Levant navigation

Levant • Jordan • Lebanon • Syria • Palestine • Israel

MENA navigation

MENA • Gulf States • Levant • North Africa