Enab Baladi, Suwayda
This year’s grape harvest in Suwayda (southern Syria) produced more than last season, but the improvement has not translated into better sales or returns for farmers. Cultivation and harvesting costs have risen, while growers struggle to secure prices that cover their spending throughout the season.
Production varies from one plot to another depending on the soil, grape variety, and care farmers give their land. There is therefore no uniform estimate of how much a dunam, equivalent to 1,000 square meters, can yield across all farms.
According to farmers interviewed by Enab Baladi, there is demand for grapes, but prices fall short of growers’ expectations and fail to cover their costs. Selling the harvest remains a challenge even in a more productive season.
Multiple Markets, Prices Below Production Costs
Some of the harvest goes to local markets, where traders buy the largest quantities from farmers. Another portion is processed into products, primarily grape molasses and raisins, or arak, an anise-flavored spirit, and wine.
Samer, a farmer from Arman (Suwayda countryside, southern Syria), a village known for grape cultivation, said farmers in his village sell their harvest in several ways. They sell fresh grapes or use them to produce molasses and raisins, rather than taking them to the governorate’s arak distillery.
He said the costs of growing grapes begin when the vines are first planted. This year, a grape seedling cost around 150 Syrian pounds (approximately $1.06), while a worker charged around 250 pounds (approximately $1.77) to dig planting holes.
Subsequent costs vary depending on the grape variety and the agricultural work required.
Grapevines need spraying several times during the season, typically three to four times, alongside plowing, pruning, and other agricultural work. Workers’ daily wages range from 750 to 1,000 pounds (approximately $5.30 to $7.07).
Farmers’ difficulties extend beyond rising production costs. The price they receive for their grapes remains decisive in determining whether the season is economically viable.
According to estimates by farmer and trader Ayman Hudaifa, producing a kilogram of grapes costs between 40 and 45 pounds (approximately $0.28 to $0.32), while the selling price ranges from 30 to 35 pounds (approximately $0.21 to $0.25). This gap makes it difficult for farmers to recover everything they spent during the season.
Ayman said each dunam of his land had yielded around one metric ton in previous years, before production declined during the drought years. This year, yields recovered to between 600 and 700 kilograms, illustrating how production varies across seasons and fields depending on agricultural conditions, the nature of the land, and the variety planted.
Diseases Increased This Season’s Costs
Agricultural engineer Qutaiba Hatem said difficulty selling the harvest remained the main problem this season, alongside rising cultivation costs. Current prices, he explained, do not match the expenses farmers bear.
Hatem said several diseases and pests had become more widespread this season, including powdery mildew, grape mites, downy mildew, and leaf miners, forcing farmers to intensify control measures.
Rising prices for pesticides and other crop treatments increased the cost of protecting the harvest, adding to the labor costs mentioned earlier.
Not all grape varieties perform equally well on the market. Baladi grapes are among the easiest to sell, followed by Halwani, while Salti grapes attract demand particularly from buyers who want to use them to make molasses and raisins.
What Will Happen to the Harvest?
Abu Saeed, a farmer from Shahba (Suwayda governorate, southern Syria), said this year’s grape season faced several obstacles. Chief among them was the closure of the Damascus-Suwayda road at the height of the season, which limited farmers’ ability to sell their crops outside the governorate.
He explained that in previous years he had sold part of his production to other governorates or to Lebanon, but those markets were no longer accessible.
He added that some farmers cannot afford to process their harvest into molasses. Producing a 25-kilogram tin costs around 800 pounds, including labor, processing, and transport.
These costs have prompted some farmers to hand their harvest over to a processing facility in exchange for half the molasses produced. The facility keeps the other half as payment for processing the grapes.
Grape farmers are waiting to see whether they can sell part of their harvest to the arak distillery, amid concerns that it may not open or accept the quantities they had been counting on selling.
One farmer told Enab Baladi that there was talk of the distillery accepting the harvest, but the payment schedule remained unclear. Payment for the grapes could be delayed until production begins, increasing uncertainty for growers who need cash after a long season of spending.
A department manager at the arak distillery, who preferred not to be named, told Enab Baladi that the facility was “operating with administrative staff only.” It had not begun accepting the harvest or set a clear date for doing so, and he did not confirm whether it would be able to operate this year.
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