Syrian crisis repercussions on the agricultural sector: Case study of wheat, cotton and olives

Abstract

This paper aims to outline the consequences of the Syrian conflict on the land use/cultivated area, yield and production of the main crops: wheat, cotton, and olives. To achieve the study goal secondary data were collected from FAO website. After that the autoregressive integrated moving average (ARIMA) model was applied for the time series analysis. Finally, the decrease in production was calculated and the total losses were valued at the local and international prices. A long-term analysis from 1960 to 2016 showed a significant positive change for the main studied crops, but a significant negative change was noticed from 2000 to 2016 due to the conflict issue in Syria. while, the highest reduction was recorded in 2014 for wheat and olives by 47.53% and 64.18% respectively and in 2016 for cotton with more than 93% of the total reduction. Whereas, the total losses in local prices were (US$1,168,204,415) and (US$4,733,586,663), valued at the international price for the main crops: wheat, cotton, and olives, which are 9% of the 2011 Syrian GDP.