More Than 45 Million Face Severe Hunger as Agricultural Funding Crisis Deepens Across the Middle East

More than 45 million people face crisis-level hunger or worse across conflict-hit countries in the Near East and North Africa, as violence, displacement and economic shocks erode agricultural production. With critical FAO programmes facing severe funding shortfalls, the crisis is increasingly threatening not only immediate food supplies but also the ability of millions to grow food, earn livelihoods and recover from prolonged emergencies.

Across some of the Near East and North Africa's most fragile food systems, the humanitarian challenge is no longer confined to getting enough food to people facing hunger. Conflict, displacement and economic shocks are simultaneously eroding the farms, livestock, infrastructure and rural livelihoods that allow communities to produce food for themselves.

More than 45 million people across the countries highlighted by the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) face crisis-level hunger or worse. Yet the scale of acute food insecurity tells only part of the story: agricultural land has been damaged or made inaccessible, markets have been disrupted, and households that depend on farming and livestock are struggling to preserve the productive assets on which their future income and food supply depend.

FAO is consequently pressing donors for urgent financing for emergency agricultural assistance, including seeds, animal feed, veterinary services, cash and vouchers, irrigation support and other inputs.

The Funding Deficit Is Colliding With Enormous Food Needs

The financial pressure is visible across multiple crises, although the country figures cover different assessment periods and funding plans. In Sudan, 19.5 million people are facing high levels of acute food insecurity, while just 23 percent of the $193 million required under FAO's 2026–2028 Emergency Response Plan has been funded.

Yemen presents an even sharper financing gap. Some 18.3 million people faced Crisis or worse levels of acute food insecurity in the latest analysis, while FAO has secured less than one percent of the $87.9 million required for its 2027 Emergency and Resilience Plan. The disparity leaves agricultural assistance confronting extraordinarily high needs with only a fraction of the resources sought.

Syria combines another large food-security burden with substantial recovery requirements. Around 7.2 million people were facing acute food insecurity in late 2025, and FAO is seeking $171.5 million in 2027 to assist 5.2 million people. The proposed intervention combines immediate protection of livelihoods with recovery and resilience measures, linking short-term survival to the restoration of productive capacity.

Gaza and the West Bank face their own deterioration. More than 1.2 million people experienced Crisis or worse levels of acute food insecurity between April and June 2026, with conditions projected to worsen during the second half of the year. FAO is seeking $140.9 million for 2027 for time-critical agricultural assistance and recovery.

Taken together, the figures expose a difficult feature of the region's hunger emergencies. Financing is required not only to address immediate deprivation but also to prevent the systems producing food and income from deteriorating further. Where productive assets disappear, recovery becomes a question of rebuilding livelihoods rather than simply restarting temporarily interrupted activity.

Lebanon Shows How Conflict Can Strip Away the Foundations of Recovery

Lebanon shows how rapidly food insecurity can become intertwined with damage to the agricultural economy. More than one million people were displaced following the March 2026 escalation, primarily from rural areas, placing additional strain on communities whose livelihoods were already exposed to conflict.

In the southern districts of Bent Jbeil, Marjaayoun, El Nabatieh and Sour, between 55 and 65 percent of the population is projected to face Crisis or worse levels of acute food insecurity. Nationwide, more than 22 percent of agricultural land has reportedly been damaged, while approximately half of the agricultural land in South and Nabatieh is inaccessible.

Those figures point to a problem extending beyond lost crops. When farmland cannot be reached and agricultural infrastructure and services are damaged, farmers face obstacles to resuming production even when immediate displacement pressures ease. FAO's assessment work in Nabatieh has therefore included farmland and infrastructure damage as well as discussions with farmers, cooperatives and Ministry of Agriculture staff over recovery priorities.

FAO requires $38 million to reach 35,000 conflict-affected farmers and rural households in Lebanon. Alongside emergency assistance, the agency is supporting efforts to translate the country's new 10-year National Agriculture Strategy and Investment Plan into action, focusing on restoring production, improving water-use efficiency and strengthening agricultural competitiveness.

Lebanon consequently captures the tension running through the wider regional emergency. Humanitarian interventions must respond to households facing hunger now, while agricultural recovery requires preserving or restoring the assets that will determine whether those same households can support themselves later.

Protecting Agriculture Before the Window for Intervention Closes

Emergency agricultural assistance operates differently from assistance focused exclusively on immediate consumption. Seeds have to reach farmers when they can still be planted; livestock feed and veterinary care have to arrive before animals are lost; irrigation and other agricultural inputs have to be available while productive activity remains possible.

FAO says its interventions have already enabled farmers in Gaza to resume production and helped livestock-keeping households preserve sources of food and income. In Sudan, the agency reached almost five million people in 2026 through seeds, livestock vaccination, animal feed, agricultural input vouchers and other forms of support.

The examples also reveal why the timing of humanitarian financing carries consequences beyond the amount eventually mobilised. A funding gap during a critical agricultural period can leave households losing productive resources that later require rehabilitation or replacement. Assistance delivered after those losses may confront a fundamentally different and more difficult recovery challenge.

The stakes are especially visible for farming, herding and fishing communities already confronting conflict, displacement and disrupted markets. Maintaining productive capacity cannot remove the wider forces driving acute food insecurity, but it can determine whether vulnerable households retain a means of producing food and generating income while those pressures persist.

What happens next will depend heavily on whether financing reaches agricultural programmes while intervention is still possible. Sudan's substantial funding deficit, Yemen's less-than-one-percent financing level and the large 2027 requirements across Gaza and the West Bank, Syria and Lebanon leave a key question hanging over the regional response: whether humanitarian action can protect the means of food production before emergency needs deepen into even larger recovery burdens.