After Nagorno-Karabakh: Armenia’s Growing Dependence on Imported Wheat

When Artak Nersеsyan looks across the flat fields he rents in Armenia’s Armavir region, he is counting more than hectares. He is measuring what was lost. Before the 2020 war, the farmer from Hadrut grew wheat and barley on fertile land in what was then Nagorno-Karabakh. Displaced from his home, he is now trying to continue grain farming in Armenia, where the numbers increasingly fail to add up.

“I used to sow about 50 hectares of wheat and 40 hectares of barley, but this year I decided not to plant winter crops at all,” Nersesyan said. High land rents, irrigation fees, and rising input costs are pushing his production costs above the price of imported Russian wheat. “When you calculate everything, imported grain is cheaper, and the local producer cannot compete.”

Nersesyan’s experience reflects a broader transformation in Armenia’s food security following the loss of Nagorno-Karabakh’s agricultural lands.

Before the 2020 war, wheat and other grains imported from Nagorno-Karabakh accounted for about 10–12% of Armenia’s total wheat inflows. In the years leading up to the war, Armenia imported between 38,000 and 50,000 tonnes of grain annually from the region, roughly 30,000 of which were wheat. That volume covered about 6–9% of Armenia’s annual wheat consumption and as much as a quarter of its domestic grain production.

Much of the grain came from high-yield areas such as the Amaras and Araks valleys, where wheat was often grown without irrigation. Former officials say these dry-farming conditions produced grain with high gluten and protein content, key qualities for breadmaking.

The war dismantled that system. Nagorno-Karabakh lost about 95,000 hectares of arable land, including roughly 50,000 hectares sown with grain. By 2021, grain production had collapsed by more than 90% compared with pre-war levels, turning the region from a net exporter into an importer. Armenia was left to absorb the shock.

In 2021, the Armenian government launched a program aimed at compensating for the loss of around 40,000 tonnes of grain (cereals and leguminous crops) previously supplied from Nagorno-Karabakh, allocating about $1.85 million. Longer-term trends, however, have continued to move in the opposite direction.

Armenia’s wheat self-sufficiency peaked at 53% in 2016 and has steadily declined since, reaching about 23% in 2024, according to official data. Over the same period, sown areas nearly halved, while total output fell sharply. Today, about 99% of imported wheat comes from Russia, leaving Armenia highly dependent on a single supplier.

Gagik Sardaryan, a board member of the Yerevan-based Center for Agricultural and Rural Development (CARD), says cheap Russian imports, combined with weak agricultural policy, have steadily undermined local production.

“Russia produces wheat and flour at very low cost, and the weaker ruble only adds to the pressure,” Sardaryan said. “Armenian farmers are operating in an unfavorable competitive environment.”

For Sardaryan, food security should outweigh short-term price considerations. He argues that dependence on imports carries strategic risks that go beyond market fluctuations.

“Isn’t it better to depend on our own farmers than on one or two countries?” he said, noting that many states subsidize domestic grain production to keep both food and money inside the country.

Sardaryan believes Armenia could raise wheat self-sufficiency to 70–75% within a few years by improving yields rather than expanding cultivated land. Studies by U.S.-funded agricultural experts suggest that modern technologies, better seed varieties, and improved crop management could double yields to 4–5 tonnes per hectare, lifting production to nearly 300,000 tonnes.

For farmers like Nersesyan, however, the constraints remain immediate and tangible. In Nagorno-Karabakh, he paid the state about $18 per hectare for land and relied largely on rain-fed agriculture. In Armenia, he now pays between $130 and $210 per hectare in rent, along with irrigation costs of about $65 per hectare per season.

“Even if yields are higher here, the costs are much higher,” he said.

As Armenia debates how to rebuild its grain sector, the experience of Nagorno-Karabakh continues to loom large. Once a quiet but essential contributor to the country’s bread supply, its lost fields now stand as a reminder that food security is shaped not only by markets and climate, but also by war and geopolitics.

Tags: Armenia, food security, Nagorno-Karabakh, barley, Grains, wheat, imports