By Taxpayer-backed food assistance helped feed the country while a water-intensive stimulant crop became far more profitable than growing food.
Yemen’s farmers have increasingly turned to khat, a stimulant leaf chewed for a euphoric high, as foreign aid and grain imports helped sustain a system in which food came from abroad and domestic agriculture struggled to compete.
The United States did not directly pay farmers to grow khat. But for decades, U.S. and international assistance supported food imports even as Yemeni agriculture shifted toward a crop that consumes scarce water and can earn farmers many times more than food crops, explained The Daily Caller.
One reason Yemen is so impoverished is roughly 80% of the male population is addicted to Khat. They're high almost all the time. pic.twitter.com/pBuE2NDUZk
— Lee Kuan Yimby (@LeeKuanYimby) September 19, 2026
An estimated 500 liters—more than 132 gallons—of water go into producing one bag of khat sufficient for a single high. Most growers use basic irrigation methods that further increase demand; practices such as drip irrigation remain rare among khat farmers.
Cultivation has grown by more than 40 percent in many parts of Yemen since a 2014 United Nations report. The civil war has accelerated the shift. Khat continues to generate far greater returns than food crops even as diesel costs for pumping groundwater rise, according to Musaed Aklan, a senior water researcher at the Sana’a Center think tank.
The crop’s expansion also followed advice from foreign companies and development agencies in the 1970s and 1980s that urged Yemen’s government to favor cash crops over food production. Dependence on imported grain then required more subsidies for imports and further discouraged domestic grain farming, Aklan has reported.
Those choices distorted local grain markets. Rising disposable incomes and improved roads helped create favorable conditions for khat. Prices remained high, demand steady, and profit margins near 80 percent. Khat became roughly 10 to 20 times more profitable than most alternative crops, the center found.
I looked deep into Yemen’s Khat addiction, and the scale of devastation is insane.
Data shows Yemeni citizens spend HALF of their total income on Khat.
Khat also uses 40% of their total water supply for no nutritional value while lack of water and starvation is extremely… https://t.co/ioeOlrAuTI pic.twitter.com/fUuJtkQWLq
— Lee Kuan Yimby (@LeeKuanYimby) September 20, 2026
For years, Western governments and international organizations have provided post-conflict assistance on terms that critics say did little for ordinary Yemenis and sometimes weakened the country’s ability to build a more sustainable economy.
Today, 18.3 million people face “acute food insecurity,” which the World Food Programme describes as “one of the world’s most urgent humanitarian crises.”
From fiscal years 2016 through 2024, U.S. humanitarian commitments to Yemen commonly ranged from $800 million to more than $1.5 billion a year, according to USAFacts data. In 2018, the United States supplied 385,000 metric tons of soft white wheat—enough to fill about 17,000 semi-trucks and more than China exported that year. Wheat shipments to Yemen have accounted for roughly 30 percent of all U.S. wheat food aid.
Since taking office, President Donald Trump has sharply reduced foreign assistance and largely dismantled the U.S. Agency for International Development, long a primary conduit for aid. The United States had previously supplied as much as 40 percent of tracked food and emergency relief entering Yemen.
The cuts have coincided with a widening funding shortfall. International donors requested $2.16 billion in emergency humanitarian relief for Yemen in 2026; the latest U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs figures show that only 22 percent had been received. Some U.S. support continued in fiscal year 2025, when the United States obligated $54 million for Yemen, including $21.7 million for nutrition and humanitarian programs.
Harvard instructor and Yemen historian Asher Orkaby criticized large-scale grain imports, arguing they undercut local farmers. “The WFP strategy of grain dumping harms the future well-being of Yemeni farmers who cannot compete with free food,” he said. He added that much of the assistance strengthened local armed groups and prolonged conflict rather than “contributing to a resolution of the conflict and developing Yemen’s long-term stability.”
Orkaby said media and aid organizations can oversimplify the crisis by emphasizing starvation to boost readership or donations. “The unchecked dumping of large quantities of imported food by humanitarian organizations can cripple local farmers, leading to a vicious cycle of impoverishment,” he said. He argued for a different approach: “Sustainable aid models draw instead upon locally sourced emergency food supplies to the furthest extent possible, knowing that such an investment-centric approach will reduce dependence in future years.”
Aklan recommended conducting studies and risk assessments and tailoring programs to the distinct economic, political, and environmental conditions of different regions, rather than applying uniform packages of money and food. He said authorities overseeing food production, aid, and agricultural resources should answer to local communities rather than external donors or distant bureaucracies.
Aklan also cautioned that Yemen cannot produce all the food it needs. “Achieving full food self-sufficiency in Yemen is simply not feasible,” he told The Daily Caller, because imports will remain necessary to address insecurity and protect limited water supplies. In the meantime, he said, “It is crucial to curb the continued expansion of khat cultivation.”
A State Department spokesman told The Daily Caller that the department does not fund emergency food aid or food-security programs in Yemen. The department maintains “zero tolerance for waste, theft, fraud, or diversion of U.S. resources” away from civilians who need them most.
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