A severe drought in North Africa has Tunisian farmers bracing for a catastrophically poor harvest, threatening food security in the cash-strapped country. At a time when the global grain market has been disrupted by the war in Ukraine, Tunisia’s domestic grain production has also dried up as a lack of rainfall has killed the crop. Even before the baking summer months, the soil in the small Mediterranean country, whose water resources are steadily depleting as climate change intensifies, is parched and dusty. “We have never seen such a bad drought,” said wheat farmer Tahar Chaouachi, walking dejectedly through his field, 55 kilometers (35 miles) inland from the capital Tunis. “The last four years have been dry, but this season we expected rain. Instead, it has gotten worse.” With some of Tunisia’s water reservoirs almost completely dry, authorities last month imposed emergency measures that allocate supplies to households and ban the use of water for washing cars as well as for irrigating fields. “Production is at zero,” said Chaouachi, whose farmland is in Beja province, a key grain-producing region since the Roman Empire. “The situation is unsustainable. We are losing everything we spend on seeds, fertilizers, pesticides and wages,” he said. “There is no telling where things are going.” The shortage comes at a critical time for Tunisia, a net wheat importer that has been hit hard by rising prices since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.