At the edge of his farmland in the countryside of Maaret Misrin, northwestern Syria, 52-year-old Khaled Al-Raai stands watching a dark stream flowing alongside his small orchard. For years, his village depended on a local well that once pumped up to 30 cubic metres of water per hour – enough to irrigate nearby fields and sustain entire farming seasons.
Recent years, however, have been unforgiving. The well’s output has dropped to around ten cubic metres per hour, while the cost of running pumps has soared beyond what most farmers can afford. Speaking plainly to +963, Khaled says, “This is no longer a choice – we use this water because if we don’t, we lose everything.”
Khaled never imagined he would reach the point of irrigating his crops with untreated sewage. Yet today, like many farmers across Idlib, he finds himself trapped between water scarcity, collapsing infrastructure, and rising operational costs – forces that have pushed large numbers of farmers towards the only available source of water: open sewage networks.
What began as emergency solutions, Khaled explains, “has become a reality that is reshaping agricultural production in the region and placing people before a complex health and food crisis – one that stretches from the fields to the dinner table.”
Water Scarcity Imposes a New Reality
In the countryside of Maaret Misrin, natural irrigation canals once formed part of the area’s living memory – clear water flowing year-round, nourishing crops and supplying markets in Idlib and beyond. Today, those canals have shrunk into narrow, seasonal streams barely capable of irrigating small plots. Repeated droughts over recent years have sharply lowered groundwater levels, reducing well output and forcing some wells out of service altogether.
Under these conditions, farmers have begun laying thin plastic pipes connecting their fields to open sewage channels at the edges of villages.
Khaled says this improvised network has evolved into an “informal system” shared by farmers in rotation, after reliance on wells became almost impossible due to operating costs and the absence of any meaningful agricultural support.
Attempts by local councils to ban the use of sewage water, he adds, were unrealistic – offering no practical alternatives or replacement water sources.
A Crisis Spreading Across Villages
The same complaints are echoed in villages such as Basnqoul, Kafr Yahmul, and Deir Hassan. Prolonged dry months this year caused unprecedented drops in well levels, while many irrigation projects failed due to electricity cuts and the high cost of running generators.
Suleiman Al-Eido, a farmer from the city of Harem, told +963 that economic pressure has pushed many farmers towards sewage water. Irrigating a single dunum with well water can cost up to 25 dollars, he explains, while sewage water is almost free.
“We operate in a market where crops are already sold cheaply,” he says. “There’s no support, no subsidised fuel, no treatment plants. Following safe methods means guaranteed loss.”
Farmers, he adds, are left with an unfair equation – either lose the harvest or gamble with food quality and consumer health.
Fear Creeping into Civilian Homes
As reports spread about crops irrigated with unsafe water, anxiety is growing among residents. Ramiya al-Fares, 43, from Salqin, told +963 that some vegetables now have strange smells and spoil unusually fast – signs, she believes, of contaminated irrigation.
She explains that many families are still forced to buy these vegetables because they are the cheapest available, despite fears for their children’s health.
“We’re left with two bitter options,” she says. “Either buy cheap but questionable vegetables or stop buying them altogether. That’s a choice mothers simply cannot make under these conditions.”
Al-Fares notes a worrying rise in cases of diarrhoea among children during the summer months. Doctors sometimes suggest a possible link to contaminated food, but the lack of confirmation leaves families living in constant uncertainty.
“The problem is no longer a secret,” she adds. “Everyone knows some vegetables are irrigated with unsafe water. But economic hardship leaves no room for real choice – people are forced to accept the risk.”
Local Markets: The Most Dangerous Link
At Idlib’s central wholesale market, where vegetables arrive from early morning hours, leafy greens such as parsley, mint, and lettuce stand out for their low prices.
Trader Mohammad al-Hammoud told +963 that much of this produce comes from Atmeh, Dana, and Sarmada – some irrigated with sewage water, others with mixed sources.
“There’s no authority forcing us to know the water source,” he says. “We receive shipments as they come. There’s no lab testing every load. Consumers want low prices, and if we don’t buy the produce, another trader will. Oversight is absent – and that makes the entire food chain unsafe.”
Read also: Drought Strikes Zabadani Plain in Syria’s Damascus Countryside
Deep Health Risks
From a medical perspective, gastroenterology specialist Dr Mustafa al-Azraq told +963 that the danger of contaminated vegetables goes beyond surface bacteria. Untreated sewage can carry viruses and pathogens that are difficult to remove through washing alone – including hepatitis A, E. coli, and parasitic worms that cling to leafy vegetables.
The most serious problem, he explains, is that symptoms often appear days or even weeks later, making it difficult for patients or doctors to link illness to contaminated food.
“The absence of a national system to track food-borne diseases makes the issue even more complex,” he says. “Cases appear scattered, but in reality, they are part of a single chain that is neither recorded nor systematically analysed.”
A Silent Threat to the Soil
Environmentally, water-monitoring expert Mohammad Rahmani from a local organisation told +963 that using sewage water for irrigation poses a “silent threat” to the soil. The damage does not appear immediately but accumulates slowly over years.
Heavy metals such as lead, zinc, and cadmium settle into surface and deeper soil layers and do not break down over time, he explains – leading to declining soil fertility and making recovery increasingly difficult.
Field tests conducted in Salqin and Dana, Rahmani says, show elevated salinity and organic contamination levels, indicating widespread damage. If this irrigation pattern continues, some fields could become unusable in the coming years.
Possible Solutions and Major Obstacles
Experts argue that confronting the crisis requires building small-scale treatment plants in the most affected areas, providing direct support to farmers to reduce the cost of clean water, obliging markets to disclose irrigation sources, and conducting regular product testing – alongside linking health and regulatory bodies through a shared monitoring system.
Yet these solutions collide with fragile financial and administrative realities, as well as intense population pressure caused by displacement. Without sustainable funding and clear long-term planning, implementation remains extremely difficult.
As Idlib waits for practical answers, farmers and residents remain trapped between water scarcity, contaminated crops, and narrowing choices – while risks to public health and food security continue to grow day by day.
