Rojava’s wheat farmers face tough choices under economic crunch

ERBIL, Kurdistan Region  — Syria’s contentious M4 Highway reopening to commercial traffic has given Kurdish farmers access to new buyers during harvest season.

But with every economic choice in Syria comes a political choice, as hard times have pressured farmers to reluctantly begin selling their grain to areas under the control of the Assad regime.

"We've worked from autumn until now. We're poor." Mohammed Kheir, a wheat farmer in Qamishli told Rudaw. "Whoever gives us more money, we sell it to them."

Skyrocketing inflation has made life especially difficult for many Syrians this year. The value of the Syrian pound has plummeted in recent months, crashing from nearly 1,200 per US dollar in January to now trading for up to almost 2,000 Syrian pounds per dollar in some off-market currency exchanges.

"One kilogram of wheat gets 400 Syrian pounds, and one dollar is equal to nearly 2000 Syrian pounds," farmer Ibrahim Beri told Rudaw.

Kurdish farmers say they are reluctant to do business with the Syrian regime, but it's no contest given that the Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria (NES) pays less, offering just 315 Syrian pounds per kilogram.

"Current prices are not favorable to farmers," Sheikh Mus Khelo, another farmer told Rudaw, adding that at these rates farmers can't even recoup the investment spent on planting.

Last year, the NES bought about 550,000 tons of wheat from Syrian farmers – just over half of the one million tons produced in northeast Syria, known to Kurds as Rojava, in 2019.

Facing a growing food shortage, Damascus has planned to buy more wheat from  Kurdish-controlled areas, budgeting 450 billion Syrian pounds to fill the domestic demand with products from farmers in the area.

The Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria (NES) started buying wheat from farmers in Deir ez-Zor and Raqqa last month, and has already bought 22,000 tons of wheat.

But with 2020's economy shrinking severely amid a global economic crisis brought on by the global coronavirus pandemic, it  is expected that farmers will produce just 800,000 tons of wheat this year.

The NES says it will be putting an extra tax on wheat being exported to regime areas, in order to discourage farmers from selling off all of the region's supply, even though the higher demand brings higher prices. But Beri, the farmer concurs: "whoever gives us more, that's who I'm going to sell to."

Reporting by Rangisn Sharo, translation by Sarkawt Mohammed