Fields of Ruin: Lebanese Farmers’ Scorched Harvest

This assessment is based on interviews with six specialists in the field who work with a wide range of local farming cooperatives and coalitions, farmers’ markets, environmental justice organisations, sustainable development NGOs, agribusiness companies, and others. It documents how the agrifood sector was impacted and how it responded. It also highlights how the repercussions for food security will likely be prolonged without policy interventions. 

Importantly, Lebanon entered the conflict with an already underproductive agrifood economy. In 2022, around 80 percent of calories consumed in Lebanon were imported, while most agricultural production was export-oriented, often in favour of politically connected actors in the sector. In tandem, underfunding and mismanagement of the sector by successive governments have become a recurrent trend, as agricultural allocation in successive budgets never exceeded 0.5 percent of total expenditures. 

Impacts during the conflict 

Almost one-quarter of Lebanon’s farms are located in the governorates of the South and Nabatieh, and the agrifood sector accounts for some 80 percent of local economic activity there. Within the first month of the conflict, Israeli forces had already deployed internationally prohibited white phosphorus and burned 40,000 olive trees. By July 2024, Lebanese authorities had reported 175 Israeli attacks using white phosphorus, spread across 17 southern municipalities. 

Following the Israeli military escalation in September 2024, access and mobility became much more significant challenges. In the Bekaa Valley, accounting for more than a third of Lebanon’s cultivated land, the head of Natagri, an agribusiness company, said that while access to the governorate’s western areas was possible, “no one dared” to transport goods in the north. As a result, the company lost a substantial part of its production, impacting, for example, grape production, with the fruit generally harvested in autumn. 

Other noted impacts were that the labour costs increased, with interviewees saying workers started charging LL 2 million, rather than the usual LL 550,000, (roughly US$6 to US$22) for five hours of work, nearly a four-fold increase. The quality of production suffered, as workers and business coordinators were not able to properly monitor areas that they were cultivating. Instead, the focus was on getting as much product to market as quickly as possible to decrease losses. Operational efficiency was thus naturally impacted. Managers had to shift many production coordination activities from in-person to online, a modality they had not often used and found ill-suited for agricultural work. Various specialised workers, such as agricultural company engineers, stopped working altogether. 

Supply-chain disruptions 

Israel’s military escalation led to supply chain disruptions within days. By the end of September, only a week into the escalation, a World Food Programme (WFP) assessment revealed that shops in the South and the Bekaa reported potential supply disruptions of 67 percent and 54 percent, respectively. Subsequently, disruption rates likely approached 100 percent in areas where entire villages and towns were razed to the ground.  

Businesses, traders, and other actors in the agricultural sector were thus forced to switch suppliers for many goods usually sourced from the South and the Bekaa. Alternative suppliers included those in northern governorates and foreign countries. However, this shift could not always compensate for significant losses in local production. For example, the southern governorate had been responsible for 94 percent of Lebanon’s banana production, while the Bekaa produced 70 percent of Lebanon’s grapes, amounts that were difficult to source elsewhere. 

In areas heavily affected by the conflict, anecdotal evidence suggests that many farmers and harvesting companies prioritised getting their products from people of their region first, to support their local communities. 

“We want to help people from the region and ourselves,” explained the head of a local cooperative in Bekaa, Jana al Ayadi, in a show of intra-regional cooperation. She added that bringing food “from outside [the region] is very costly.” 

NGOs and industry stakeholders in the Baalbek-Hermel governorate, also heavily impacted by Israeli strikes, noted a similar trend towards regionally redirected sales. Interviewees highlighted that popular markets continued to witness economic activity even in areas experiencing bombing. To cover product shortages resulting from disruptions to the movement of goods from the Bekaa, industry participants in the Baalbek area also resourced suppliers. 

“In the latest period, we’ve been seeing Akkar potatoes entering Baalbek in a very strong manner,” explained Omar Abbas, a farmer active in the sector and market in Baalbek. “Some areas could work comfortably, and others couldn’t.” 

“There were also imports at a certain level,” he added, noting that there was now a foreign competitor on everyday local products such as potatoes. 

Supply chain disruptions were not limited to food products per se but also related to packaging and containers. Companies in the South that used to supply bottles for storing olive oil, for example, were no longer able to do so, forcing agricultural companies to source containers elsewhere. 

Changes on the demand side also impacted supply chains. Deteriorating safety and food security situations led consumers to focus on essential spending. Among the many impacts of such was a substantial drop in drinking-related social outings and events, leading to a drop in business for wine producers. 

Adapting to changing supply availability, restaurants and local kitchen initiatives reported relying on lesser-quality or secondary product options. Local businesses, for example, could not secure the preferred type of thyme they would usually get from southern regions and had to settle for a different kind of thyme at a lesser quality.

Winners and losers 

Farmers, notably smaller producers, appear to have absorbed most of the sector’s financial losses. Early November estimates suggest that 60 percent of farmers were left without an income, while 80 percent could not reach their groves, in addition to the destruction and loss of hundreds of hectares of crops and hundreds of tons of produce. The Ministry of Agriculture highlighted that 6,000 hectares of agricultural land were damaged and up to 65,000 olive trees were destroyed. 

To survive, many farmers reported relying on financial support from family members and cutting household spending, with several interviewees reporting that they had to stop paying tuition fees for their children’s education. 

“They did not adapt to the conflict; their crops are on the ground,” said Mohammad Solh, the head of the sustainable development organization LACODE. 

“The target [for farmers] was not that I’m going to sell something, [but rather] I just want to get rid of what I have,” added the head of Natagri, an agribusiness company operating in the Bekaa and other areas in Lebanon. 

Notably, farmers in Lebanon remain unrecognised as a social or economic group in the Lebanese labour code or other legislation. Without a coalition or union to collectively bargain, individual farmers have little leverage when negotiating with the wholesale distributors who purchase their products. As such, they operate primarily without formal social and legal protections, leaving them at a disadvantage when dealing with traders and landowners, particularly those with political affiliations.  

Angela Saade, co-founder of environmental and social justice organization Jibal, explained that farmers feel disassociated from the consumer market: “They don’t know why products are priced in a certain way and the quantity they can sell.” She added that: “It’s very risky […] to be a small-sized producer,” given that they can invest time and money in growing a certain crop with “no idea” whether they will be able to sell it later or at a price that recoups costs. The socioeconomic vulnerabilities are then magnified for Syrian labourers, who provide a majority of the farm labour in Lebanon, whose work is almost entirely informal. 

Perhaps unsurprisingly, given the balance of power in the sector, many wholesale traders reported increased revenues throughout the escalation of the conflict—with the obvious exception being those whose businesses were directly targeted in Israeli strikes. Local markets and traders were highly active, especially in areas hosting many displaced people. “One supermarket in Zahle (a large economic hub in Western Bekaa) is not keeping up with the increase in demand,” said Abbas, the Baalbek farmer.  

Amid an almost complete absence of regulation and monitoring by official authorities, traders were able to exploit the situation to price gouge. They could pick up large amounts of goods cheaply from farmers seeking to offload products quickly and then turn around and sell these goods at inflated prices to retailers. 

Despite the distance being only a few kilometres, prices between Baalbek and Zahle varied dramatically. Even within the same region, according to Abbas, one could find the cost of the same product varying by more than 300 percent. 

Self-sustenance, Collaboration and Solidarity 

An aspect of farming that has allowed farming families to persist is their ability to have some self-sustenance, with the potential to feed their households with the products they have grown. Various interviewees pointed to increased barter and exchange between farmers during the conflict. One, for instance, who grows cabbage would exchange his product with another that grows persimmon, walnut, or otherwise. While such collaborations allowed farmers to gain access to a variety of products, they still lacked access to many other goods, particularly oil and butter. As such, their self-sufficiency had limits, and they remained in need of support. 

Amid conflict and their own related woes, farmers still displayed a notable show of solidarity. For instance, some sold only a portion of their produce and distributed the rest to collective shelters housing displaced people. Jibal was among groups that helped link these farmers and local producers to kitchens operating in collective shelters. 

What became apparent during this research was that, for many, farming was more than an income, but rather an identity. “It is not only your livelihood,” explains Saade, “it is also your lifestyle, your relation to land, to nature.” Recounting her conversation with one of the farmers, Saade recalls that before the escalation, the farmer would go to her village “just to tell them I’m here”. When Saade asked the farmer what she meant by “them”, thinking the farmer was referring to Israelis, the farmer replied, “No, the trees”.  

Looking Ahead 

Persisting Challenges Post-Conflict 

While access, mobility, and operational efficiency regained some stability after the conditional ceasefire agreement, the widespread destruction of farms, agricultural land, and businesses will likely have a long-term impact on the country’s food production.  

The Israeli military’s widespread use of white phosphorus is likely to result in persistent contamination of once-fertile land and water. As after the 2006 Israel-Lebanon War, many areas Israel bombed will be strewn with unexploded ordnance, the removal of which will take years. The Lebanese army has already begun operations to address the challenge of unexploded ordnance, but many areas will remain unsafe for at least the medium term. This will inherently impact access to and productivity of the agricultural regions in the South, the Bekaa, and elsewhere. 

Israeli attacks have caused extensive damage to infrastructure necessary for food production activities, such as water facilities. Across Lebanon, for example, around 44 water facilities have been damaged, impacting around 485,000 residents. Such an issue is also bound to impact the country’s long-term regeneration prospects, as it comes at a time of increasing inter-communal competition over resources, especially water. 

Farmers are slated to emerge from the conflict in an even weaker position relative to other participants in Lebanon’s domestic food supply chain, having lost some or all of the income they would normally have garnered during the fall. Critically, the escalation in Israeli strikes came at a time when commonly grown products, such as olives, have their harvesting season. Many farmers said they had invested time and resources for the past year awaiting the harvesting season but now have little to no crop to show for it.¹  

Olive harvesting, for example, is extremely time-bound and critically reliant on efficiency. To produce oil from harvested olives, they need to be pressed within days, as the quality of oil they can produce begins to deteriorate immediately after they are removed from the tree.  

As such, farmers end up in a lose-lose situation: They have lost the efforts they have put in for the last year, and with the passing of the season, they have to survive yet another year on whatever savings they have until the next season comes along. Those whose land and equipment were damaged or destroyed by Israeli military actions face further expenses.  

Others who didn’t lose their crops often had to operate under bombing and without normal access to agricultural equipment, leading to a significant decrease in output and income, such as members from the Jana al Ayadi cooperative in the Bekaa. Less income has meant, for many, covering expenses by taking on debt. This is in an industry where farmers’ margins are already thin. As Abbas notes, most “were losing before the war, and they started losing more after.” 

Given the financial shock of losing the autumn harvesting season, many farmers remain concerned about how they will survive the upcoming winter. 

“I know farmers waiting in front of relief and food distribution centres,” said Abbas. 

Recommendations 

With the conditional ceasefire implemented, agrifoods stakeholders want to stabilise the sector and normalise their activities. However, many have suffered significant losses, particularly small farmers, and face daunting challenges to their financial recovery and preparations for the next harvesting season. The conflict also exacerbated pre-existing inequities in the agrifood sector, which poses a significant threat to its stability if not adequately addressed.  

More extensive data collection and assessment are necessary to determine the specific policy actions required. However, Badil’s preliminary research and survey of agrifood stakeholders in Lebanon offers signposts regarding the direction these policy efforts should take. For instance, to promote a dynamic and healthy agrifoods market that is resilient to shocks and maximises benefits throughout the value chain, policies must be adopted to curtail the ability of large traders and retailers to exercise predatory market pricing. The most promising potential avenues for achieving this are: 

• The government directly regulates these dominant market players. 

• The government gives legal recognition to farmers, followed by it and NGOs supporting farmers to organise and bargain collectively, thereby offsetting dominant market players’ pricing power.  

The government and NGOs should also increase support for small and medium-sized farmers as part of a new, unified Lebanese strategy for agrifood sectoral development. This should include:  

• Providing low-interest loans and grants to allow financially distressed farmers and agrifood businesses to recover from the conflict. 

• Conducting market research and knowledge sharing regarding optimal crop diversification and cultivation strategies.  

• Supporting farmers’ transition to renewable energy usage, in particular solar. 

• Supporting the general modernisation of agricultural techniques, particularly irrigation and water usage, to increase efficiencies and environmental sustainability. 

• Explore avenues and implement programmes to increase efficiencies throughout the agrifood supply chain. 

• Establishing an appropriate balance between export-oriented agricultural production and that which supports domestic food security.  

[1] The Israeli army was aware of the time-boundedness of olive harvesting. In its forced displacement orders where Israeli army spokesperson issued warnings from residents of certain areas, the spokesperson made sure to tell displaced residents not to return to their houses or their olive fields.