GENEVA (Reuters) - The United Nations appealed on Friday for $20 million to help one million people in Syria cope with the worst drought in four decades.

Many of those in need are herders and subsistence farmers who have lost their livestock and crops after poor and erratic rainfall, according to the U.N.’s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA).

More than 100,000 herders have lost at least half their livestock.

“It is the worst drought in Syria in 40 years,” OCHA spokeswoman Elisabeth Byrs told a news briefing.

The U.N. appeal to donors said “around 1 million people in north-eastern Syria are food insecure: their income from crops and livestock sales have been depleted and currently many resort to damaging coping mechanisms, such as decreased food intake, sale of agriculture and household assets, or migration.”

It also noted a “marked increased in the prevalence of anemia, malnutrition and diarrhea especially among children less than five years of age as well as pregnant women by more than twofold compared to the same period in 2007.”

The U.N. appeal would fund food and agricultural assistance for six months. The Syrian government has already distributed emergency aid to 29,000 families, the OCHA said.

“The situation is not expected to improve until the spring of 2009,” Byrs said. This would depend if crops sown now mature then, providing rains do not fail for a second year in a row.

Syria, usually a major wheat exporter, resorted to the international wheat market in July for the first time in 15 years to compensate for one of its smallest harvests on record.

The country’s national wheat production was at 47 percent of the previous season and 49 percent of the past 10-year average, while barley production was at 67 percent and 67 percent, respectively, according to the U.N..