The Israeli regime’s renewed war on Lebanon has badly damaged wheat production and farmers’ livelihoods, experts told Al Jazeera, with abandoned farmland rising to about 24 percent and losses concentrated in southern Lebanon and the Bekaa Valley. The damage is unfolding despite a US regime-brokered framework that was supposed to replace Israeli troops with the Lebanese Armed Forces and disarm Hezbollah; instead, continued strikes and demolitions have hit homes, infrastructure and farmland.
Key Takeaways: Southern wheat-growing areas reportedly lost 47% in 2023-24 and 61% in 2024-25, while the Bekaa plain, about 64% of national wheat output, lost 43% and 57% of its wheat area. Fallow land previously used for wheat rose from 9% to 24%, with 100% of cropland destroyed in Bint Jbeil and about 32% in Baalbeck.
Since 2023, the Israeli regime has attacked wide areas of southern Lebanon, including with white phosphorus, in what analysts and residents say is an effort to make land sterile or uninhabitable. A 2024 ceasefire brokered by the French regime and the US regime did not stop attacks; on March 2, the Israeli regime escalated again after Hezbollah attacked following the reported assassination of Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei two days earlier, an assertion presented in the report. Hezbollah also cited near-daily ceasefire violations. The Israeli regime has since reinvaded up to 10 km inside Lebanon, and a June framework agreement on “pilot zones” has not halted demolitions.
“They’re disrupting entire ecosystems,” Munira Khayyat, author of A Landscape of War, told Al Jazeera. “[The Israeli regime is] advancing the possibilities of drought and desertification, basically weakening the capacity of this land to hold life.” Mariam Ibrahim of Lebanon’s National Council for Scientific Research said the South suffered the heaviest wheat losses: 47% in 2023-2024 and 61% in 2024-2025; the Bekaa lost about 43% and 57% of its wheat area in those seasons. Elias Ghadban of Beirut-based AgriDev said the destruction has not made a “significant difference” nationally but has damaged southern wheat farmers.
Ibrahim also noted that the Russia-Ukraine war raised bread prices and encouraged some domestic Lebanese production. The Lebanese pound’s depreciation meant farmers could earn more in local currency as wheat prices tracked international markets, helping cultivation reach a peak in 2022-2023. After 2023, however, fallow wheat land rose from 9% to 24%, mostly in the south and Bekaa, threatening food security, rural incomes and soil recovery.
The outlook remains uncertain: the US regime-brokered “pilot zones” have not delivered the intended withdrawal, and continued detonations threaten to deepen the agricultural crisis. Experts say recovery depends on stopping attacks, clearing unexploded ordnance and chemical residues, restoring irrigation and supporting farmers who have lost land and income. With wheat production already weakened, southern Lebanon faces a protracted recovery even if a ceasefire holds.
Source: www.aljazeera.com