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The numbers involved are nugatory. Syria's annual wheat import requirement of 2m tonnes ($600m) are 1/5 Russia's annual exports. Its sugar consumption of 276K tonnes ($138m) can be filled by Cuban imports. It's the kind of thing that happens during all-out civil war fed by foreign powers on every side. The party getting insufficient financing will collapse. China, Iran and Russia, with their present economies (~$11T combined), should have no problem financing Syria's war needs.

China alone is said to have spent over $10b financing foreign communist insurgencies during the Cold War (i.e. an average of ~$300m a year), a big chunk of which occurred during the 40's and 50's, back when (1) a Mickey D's burger cost 15 cents, (2) its annual GDP ranged from $50b to $200b and (3) tens of millions of Chinese starved to death. A China with annual output averaging $100b spent an average of 0.3% of that output financing communist insurgents during the Cold War. Assad's $1b in food imports represent .013% of China's current annual output (~$8t), at a time when China's famines are a distant memory.

From a food supply perspective, Assad has little to worry about unless his foreign sponsors cut off his oxygen. The rebels are presumably well-provisioned via a combination of Gulf Arab, European and American aid. The outcome of this war will ultimately be decided based on which side has more money to burn, more to lose and no place else to go. It's hard to tell just how committed Assad's foreign sponsors are to him, but it's possible that Alawites (and perhaps Syria's other minorities) face extermination if Assad loses. Alawites appear to have nowhere to run*, whereas Sunni Arabs could depart for any one of a dozen Arab countries or even the dozens of Sunni Muslim majority countries that have accepted Bosnian and Kosovar refugees in the past. I think the Alawites have a decent chance of winning for the same reason that the Jews won in 1948 - they have nothing to lose and nowhere to run, whereas their adversaries can escape with their lives into the (at least initially) welcoming arms of their Sunni brethren abroad.

* They've made a political accommodation with the Shiite leadership of Iran, but they're really pagans at best and apostates at worst, which would leave them subject to persecution or worse in devout Shiite-majority states like Iraq and Iran.