BEIRUT, July 20 (Xinhua) -- Farmer Ali Ibrahim once rose before dawn to tend rows of watermelons, potatoes, eggplants, and molokhia stretching across the fertile plains of Wazzani, South Lebanon.
Today, his fields lie deserted, and he carries only memories of a life built around agriculture.
"We left everything behind and escaped with our lives," the 60-year-old recalled from his temporary refuge in Halta. "We not only lost the agricultural seasons, but also our tractors, solar energy projects, and artesian wells, which were destroyed."
Ibrahim's story echoes across southern Lebanon's border villages, where war has transformed once-thriving farmlands into scorched, abandoned fields.
Olive groves that once covered rolling hillsides have been reduced to blackened trunks. Tobacco, wheat, watermelon, and vegetable plots lie covered in ash, painting a picture of an agricultural year that has been almost entirely lost.
Since hostilities erupted along the Lebanese-Israeli border in October 2023, destruction has struck at agriculture, the region's economic backbone.
Agriculture is Lebanon's third-largest economic sector after services and industry, contributing up to 7 percent of gross domestic product and supporting roughly 15 percent of the population.
Now, with access to lands near the Blue Line, a border demarcation line between Lebanon and Israel established by the UN in 2000, remaining largely impossible, farmers have endured successive losses of olive harvests, winter crops, and summer seasons, pushing thousands of households into prolonged hardship.
Lebanese Agriculture Minister Nizar Hani said earlier this month that Israeli attacks have caused over 1 billion U.S. dollars in agricultural losses in Lebanon and damaged nearly one-quarter of the country's agricultural land, or about 56,000 hectares.
Mohammad al-Husseini, head of the Southern Farmers Gathering, said the damage has affected not only seasonal crops but also perennial trees and agricultural infrastructure.
"South Lebanon is one of the country's most important agricultural regions," al-Husseini said. "It produces the largest share of Lebanon's bananas, citrus fruits and avocados, in addition to vegetables, tobacco and olives."
Al-Husseini said the use of white phosphorus and land-clearing operations by the Israeli army have devastated vast agricultural areas and woodlands, uprooting ancient olive trees and preventing farmers from accessing their lands.
The impact on production has been severe. Tobacco farmer Jalal Sweidan from the border town of Houla said that southern Lebanon's tobacco output has plunged from around five million kilograms in normal years to under two million this year.
The decline, Sweidan explained, was mainly driven by security risks and restricted land access, with some farmers threatened or shot while attempting to work their fields.
In the border village of Kfarchouba, farmer Hammoud Yahya has not been able to reach his olive groves for nearly three years.
His 1.9 hectares once produced around 50 containers of olive oil in good seasons.
"We did not only lose the harvests. We also lost the orchards themselves. They were burned and bulldozed, and the land we inherited from our fathers has changed beyond recognition," Yahya said.
Agricultural engineer Jihad Hamdan said recovery will be slow, as thousands of burned olive trees will need years to resume production, while damaged lands require the removal of war remnants, soil rehabilitation, irrigation networks restoration, and infrastructure reconstruction.
Lebanon's Ministry of Agriculture, in cooperation with international organizations, has launched support programs, including feed and supply distribution to livestock breeders and a recovery plan for irrigation networks, agricultural ponds, production facilities, and greenhouses.
Yet for many farmers, the return of agriculture remains tied to one essential condition -- stability. They are waiting for a peace that has yet to stay. ■
