The amount of wheat received by the Syrian regime’s government this year is about 164 thousand tons less than what was received last year, coinciding with the near conclusion of the wheat marketing period.

Ahmad Hilal al-Khalaf, head of the marketing office at the General Union of Farmers, stated in a press release on Thursday, July 4, that the total marketed wheat to date has exceeded 616 thousand tons, noting that marketing operations for the current season will end within ten days.

According to the received quantities, al-Khalaf expects that the marketed wheat for the current season will not exceed 680 thousand tons at most, which is less than last season’s marketed quantities of 720 thousand tons to the General Grain Corporation and 60 thousand tons to the General Organization For Seed Multiplication.

Al-Khalaf noted that wheat marketing from al-Hasakah province is better than last season due to the higher purchase price set by the government compared to the price offered by the Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria (AANES).

During the current season, the government received 170 thousand tons of wheat from Aleppo province, making it the highest producing province, followed by al-Hasakah with approximately 116 thousand tons, and Hama with around 107 thousand tons.

Around 50 thousand tons were marketed from Homs province, 20 thousand tons from Damascus countryside, 7 thousand tons from As-Suwayda, 2 thousand tons from Latakia, and 5.9 thousand tons from Tartus.

For the current agricultural season, the Syrian regime’s government set the purchase price of wheat from farmers at 5500 Syrian pounds per kilogram (0.36 USD).

Farmers have criticized the government’s pricing of wheat, arguing that it does not correspond with the costs of farming and operational expenditures such as plowing, labor wages, machinery, and fertilizers.

For years, the regime’s government has secured wheat from Russia through various methods, including bilateral agreements, rarely disclosed in detail, or tenders issued by the General Grain Corporation in Syria for wheat purchase, or what Russia sends as “aid,” or “theft” of Ukrainian wheat and sending part of it to Syria, as revealed by Ukrainian officials and news agencies, although the Syrian government denies this.

Wheat is considered one of the main strategic crops in Syria, with average production from 1990 to 2010 exceeding four million tons. In 2006, Syria recorded the highest production of 4.9 million tons, according to the Central Bureau of Statistics, with average local consumption of 2.5 million tons, leaving a surplus for export ranging between 1.2 and 1.5 million tons.