Food in Yemen

Yemeni food combines household cooking with restaurants, cafés and informal market food. Common dishes include Saltah, a stew or soup base often served with Hulba and Sahawiq; Fahsah, a hot meat stew; Mandi and Haneeth, rice-and-meat dishes associated especially with Hadramout; Madhbi, grilled meat; Shafout, Lahoh with yogurt; Ma'soob, a bread-and-banana preparation; and Sayyadiya, a coastal fish dish. Yemeni coffee, Mocha coffee, honey and Aden milk tea also have cultural and economic relevance. Meals are often shared communally, and Ramadan, harvest periods and seasonal supply changes can alter food access and eating patterns. Food access depends heavily on imported wheat flour and rice, local production, household income, location, fuel, transport, foreign exchange and security conditions. Agriculture accounts for about 60% of household income or supply in government-controlled areas, but domestic production covers only about one quarter to one third of national demand. Cereal output in 2025 was about 400,000 tonnes, below average, while estimated cereal import needs for 2026 reached about 5.2 million tonnes. Sorghum, millet, wheat, maize, pulses, livestock, dairy, fish, fruit, vegetables, coffee and honey remain relevant local sources. Qat competes with food crops for water and land, including in the Sana'a Basin. Prices do not form one reliable national food basket because currency zones, authorities and supply conditions differ. In government-controlled areas, staple prices in April 2026 were reported at roughly 22–30% below April 2025 levels, but fuel, insurance, transport and exchange-rate shocks could still raise the price paid by households. Hadramout recorded a wheat-flour reference of about YER 1,300 per kilogram in July 2025. Lean-season pressure commonly increases from June to September, while rainfall, harvests and floods affect availability. There is no dependable nationwide standard for restaurant prices, opening hours or access conditions. Food assistance is delivered through targeted, area-dependent programmes rather than one uniform national access system. In government-controlled areas, the Humanitarian Food Assistance Programme was reported to reach about 1.7 million people from March to May 2026, with a projection of about 1.2 million people from June to September 2026 at only around one third of the standard ration. Eligibility and delivery depend on the programme, location and household circumstances; FAO, WFP and UNICEF support food and nutrition work but are not Yemen's national food regulators. Food safety rules include the Food Control and Trading Regulation Law No. 38/1992 as amended by Law No. 13/2002 and the Consumer Protection Law No. 46/2008. The Yemen Standardization, Metrology and Quality Control Organization, known as YSMO, provides a standards, testing and inspection reference, and its technical regulation GSO 150-1:2020 makes expiry-date information mandatory. A National Food Safety Regulatory Committee was reconstituted in January 2025 to coordinate bodies responsible for economy and trade, health, agriculture and fisheries, water and environment, research, chambers and consumer interests. Inspections can occur at ports, customs points, markets and local branches, but enforcement and complaint handling remain fragmented between authorities and regions. Safe cooking requires treated or boiled water, hand hygiene, separation of raw and cooked food and suitable temperature control. Contaminated water, poor sanitation, floods and displacement increase the risk of cholera and other acute watery diseases; WHO reported 282,495 suspected cholera cases and 909 deaths through epidemiological week 17 of 2025. Refrigeration and cold-chain access are not universal, so perishable food needs particular care. Nutrition also varies sharply with income, region, displacement and season: a 2025 UNICEF update estimated inadequate food consumption in about 57% of households, while a June 2025 WFP, FAO and UNICEF assessment estimated acute malnutrition affecting about 2.4 million children under five and 1.5 million pregnant or breastfeeding women. National nutrition estimates remain limited because the latest cited SMART surveys were from 2022 in SBA areas and 2023 in government-controlled areas. Water scarcity and land degradation constrain sustainable food production. Agriculture uses about 90% of water withdrawals, and FAO linked about 30% of withdrawals in the cited Sana'a Basin context to qat. Rainwater harvesting, drip or solar irrigation, watershed and flood protection, drought-tolerant crops, soil and seed management, intercropping, post-harvest storage, local processing and better cold chains can reduce losses and strengthen supply. Water User Associations, including women's participation, and monitored fisheries can support local resilience. Coffee, honey, dairy and fish value chains offer additional income and food-security pathways, although reliable nationwide food-waste and recycling figures are not available.