War has sharply reduced wheat-growing areas in southern Lebanon and the Bekaa Valley, leaving farmers without livelihoods and more previously cultivated land idle, according to researchers and food-security experts interviewed by Al Jazeera.

The report, published Wednesday by Justin Salhani, describes damage to two important agricultural regions and warns that the consequences for small farmers could persist after fighting ends.

Mariam Ibrahim, a researcher with Lebanon’s National Council for Scientific Research, told Al Jazeera that the south recorded average losses in wheat-growing areas of 47 per cent in the 2023–2024 season and 61 per cent in 2024–2025.

The Bekaa plain, which accounts for approximately 64 per cent of national wheat production, lost around 43 per cent and 57 per cent of its wheat area in those respective seasons, she said. Ibrahim authored “Wheat in Crisis,” a study tracking Lebanon’s wheat cultivation from 2017 to 2025.

The study also reported that all cropland in the border town of Bint Jbeil had been destroyed, compared with approximately 32 per cent in the eastern Baalbeck district.

Those losses followed a period of expansion. Ibrahim said higher bread prices following the Russia-Ukraine war, alongside the depreciation of Lebanon’s currency, had created incentives for domestic wheat cultivation. The area planted with wheat peaked in the 2022–2023 season.

Since 2023, however, the proportion of previously wheat-growing land left fallow has increased from nine per cent to 24 per cent, mostly in the south and Bekaa Valley, according to experts cited in the report.

Elias Ghadban, a food-security expert with Beirut-based consultancy AgriDev, distinguished the national impact from the damage to individual farmers. He told Al Jazeera the destruction had not made a “significant difference” nationally, but southern wheat farmers had “lost their livelihoods.” Rising living costs and salaries that had failed to keep pace added to the pressure, he said.

Author Munira Khayyat warned that the damage extended beyond individual crops. “They’re disrupting entire ecosystems,” she told Al Jazeera, arguing that Israeli attacks were weakening the land’s capacity to sustain life and increasing the risks of drought and desertification.

Experts interviewed by the outlet warned that destruction, compounded by Lebanon’s economic crisis, could prevent some small farmers from rebuilding even when the fighting stops.

Sources