Only 1.5% of Gaza farmland usable, says UN’s Food and Agriculture Organisation
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Palestinians watching an airdrop of food in the central Gaza Strip on Aug 6, 2025.
PHOTO: AFP
- FAO reports only 1.5% of Gaza's farmland is accessible and undamaged, a drop from May, based on a July 28 survey.
- FAO Director-General Qu Dongyu warns Gaza is on the "brink of a full-scale famine" due to blocked access and collapsed food systems.
- The FAO calls for safe humanitarian access to restore food production, highlighting that agriculture supported 25% of Gaza's population.
AI generated
PARIS – Only 1.5 per cent of Gaza’s farmland is accessible and undamaged – just over 2 sq km – according to the latest satellite survey published on Aug 6 by the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), which warned the Palestinian territory was on “the brink of a full-scale famine”.
In its previous survey, published at the end of May, the FAO had indicated that less than 5 per cent of Gaza farmland was both accessible and undamaged, based on data from the UN Satellite Centre.
The survey, which dates from July 28, found that 8.6 per cent of Gaza’s farmland was accessible, but only 1.5 per cent, or 2.3 sq km, was both accessible and usable.
An additional 12.4 per cent of farmland is undamaged, but not accessible.
An overwhelming majority of Gaza’s farmland – 86.1 per cent – is damaged, the survey found.
“Gaza is now on the brink of a full-scale famine,” FAO director-general Qu Dongyu said in a statement.
“People are starving not because food is unavailable, but because access is blocked, local agrifood systems have collapsed, and families can no longer sustain even the most basic livelihoods,” he added.
Mr Qu called for safe and sustained humanitarian access to restore local food production and avoid a further loss of life.
“The right to food is a basic human right,” he said.
Before the conflict, agriculture accounted for around 10 per cent of the Gaza Strip’s economy.
The FAO estimated that more than 560,000 people, or a quarter of the population, were being at least partially supported by agriculture and fishing.
The Israeli government is under growing pressure to bring the war in Gaza to an end, with concern mounting after the United Nations warned that famine was unfolding in the territory of more than two million Palestinians.
The October 2023 attack by Hamas that sparked the war resulted in the deaths of 1,219 people, the majority of them civilians, according to an AFP tally based on official figures.
Of the 251 hostages seized during Hamas’ 2023 attack, 49 are still held in Gaza, including 27 the Israeli military says are dead.
The Israeli offensive has killed at least 61,158 people in Gaza, mostly civilians, according to figures from the Gaza health ministry, which are considered reliable by the United Nations. AFP
