A $175 Million Farm Grant
Syria is preparing to launch a six-year agricultural program financed by a World Bank grant of $175 million, part of a broader effort to rebuild a farming sector strained by years of disrupted production and supply chains. The initiative, named STAR, is being finalized in continuing technical meetings between a Syrian agriculture ministry delegation and a World Bank team in the Jordanian capital, Amman.
The ministry confirmed the plan on 21 July 2026, describing the grant as the financial backbone of an effort to raise productivity and place the sector on a more sustainable footing over the life of the program.
From Crops to Livestock
The program targets the full breadth of Syrian agriculture. It aims to develop crop production, strengthen agricultural value chains, and support the livestock sector, measures intended to lift output and improve long-term sustainability across farming and herding alike.
It also seeks to revive the country's agricultural cooperatives and activate their work, a step framed as directly benefiting farmers and rural communities, alongside wider support for private-sector participation in agricultural development.
Digitizing the Ministry
Beyond the fields, STAR carries an administrative overhaul. The program includes automating agricultural services and procedures and digitizing the agriculture ministry's operations, with the stated aim of raising institutional efficiency.
The technology component is cast as a way to deliver a qualitative shift in how the sector is managed, rather than a one-off upgrade, tying day-to-day administration to the wider modernization goals.
Rebuilding Food Security
The project sits within a wider recovery drive, designed to help the sector withstand the challenges that have battered production and agricultural supply chains. Strengthening food security and sustainable rural development are named among its central objectives.
With preparations still under way abroad, no detailed timetable for disbursing the grant or starting work on the ground has yet been made public, leaving the pace of implementation to be set once the technical groundwork concludes.