The Syrian Ministry of Agriculture plans to cultivate 50,000 hectares of cotton this season and support the sector in an effort to restore production levels close to those recorded in Syria around 15 years ago.
The ministry announced its plan during the 41st Cotton Conference, held in the city of Aleppo, northern Syria, on Thursday, March 26, and attended by Enab Baladi.
In remarks during the conference, Syrian Agriculture Minister Amjad Badr said restoring cotton to its former status in Syria requires achieving major gains in productivity by expanding the area allocated to the crop, increasing yields per unit of land, and developing currently available agricultural resources for future growth.
He said this development depends on shifting to modern irrigation methods and producing new cotton varieties with high productivity and strong technological characteristics that are suited to climate change and able to withstand different environmental stresses.
The minister called for joint efforts to reach stages of surplus, stability, and export in Syrian cotton, in all its forms, and to restore its “prestigious” place in global markets, considering it one of the core components of cotton blends used in spinning mills worldwide.
He also stressed his commitment to strengthening leadership in Syria’s cotton sector through partnerships with research bodies, the private sector, and the development of modern and appropriate working tools.
Badr underlined the need to restore cultivated areas to their previous levels before the years of the Syrian revolution, to provide raw material for industry and because of the crop’s importance to ideal crop rotation, especially in the eastern governorates, where cotton can generate export revenues, oilseeds, and animal feed from its byproducts.
Declined during the revolution
Badr said cotton cultivation declined during the Syrian revolution because of the conditions the country went through, affecting production, cultivated area, yields, and the level of services provided to the sector.
He told journalists after the conference that cotton is a cash and strategic crop, an important source of foreign currency, and primarily an export crop, adding that Syrian cotton remains competitive in global markets.
He said the ministry is currently discussing this reality and identifying the difficulties, problems, and challenges facing cotton cultivation to expand it again.
This includes increasing cultivated areas and applying the necessary technical standards, especially in the field of rational water use and biofertilizers, to achieve higher production than current levels by expanding acreage and focusing on local Syrian varieties, which he said are of high quality and competitive in the global market.
Mohammad Maari, director of the Cotton Bureau at the Ministry of Agriculture, told Enab Baladi that around 40,000 hectares of cotton had originally been planned for cultivation, but only 25,000 hectares were actually planted across Syria in 2025. The plan for this year, he added, is to cultivate 50,000 hectares.
With the start of the cotton planting season at the beginning of April, production forecasts will begin to emerge, according to Maari.
He confirmed that the ministry will buy the entire cotton crop from all farmers in Syria, on the condition that they comply with the Ministry of Agriculture’s plans, instructions, and the resolutions of the Cotton Conference.
The purchase price for the 2025 cotton season has not yet been issued, though Maari expects it to be around 8,500 Syrian pounds per kilogram, or roughly $0.70. For the current year, the ministry will study costs and set the price after the end of the season.
Agricultural decline
Syria’s agricultural sector declined during the years of the Syrian revolution because of field conditions that forced large numbers of farmers to flee, in addition to the shelling of agricultural land by the former Syrian regime.
The suspension of government support also contributed to declining production levels, discouraging farmers from cultivating their land and pushing them toward other sectors such as trade and industry.
Declining water resources also led to changes in agricultural plans and crop composition, depending on available water supplies.
Agricultural plans saw a major contraction in the areas designated for several crops, including cotton, because of reduced water resources and a shift toward crops requiring less water, as agricultural affairs expert engineer Abdulrahman Yassin Qarnfleh had previously told Enab Baladi.
On the other hand, farmers in Raqqa, whom Enab Baladi spoke to, had stopped planting cotton because of the lack of support for the crop and weak marketing in the area.
Leading production crop
Cotton ranks at the forefront of agricultural production in terms of economic importance, as it supplies ginning, textile, spinning, vegetable oil, and feed factories with raw material.
Cotton fields in Syria account for between 20% and 22% of irrigated cultivated land, and around 20% of the population works in its production, trade, industry, and transport, according to figures presented by the ministry during the 41st Cotton Conference.
Syria’s cotton production cycle is considered complete, from raw material to final product, and the textile sector is one of the country’s most important industrial sectors.
According to Ministry of Agriculture data announced during the conference, Syria ranked second globally for years in yield per unit of land, with average yields rising from 1,625 kilograms per hectare in 1970 to 4,000 kilograms per hectare in 2010.
Cotton production reached around one million tons in 2005, but fell to nearly 97,000 tons of seed cotton in 2020.
The area planted with cotton also dropped from 237,000 hectares in 2005 to 32,000 hectares in 2020, according to the ministry.
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