Feature: Lebanese tobacco farmers forced to abandon fields in border areas amid conflict

BEIRUT, Aug. 29 (Xinhua) — Odelle Salameh, a tobacco farmer in Qlaiaa, a village in the Marjeyoun District in southern Lebanon, had to abandon her tobacco fields in the border area amid an ongoing conflict between Israel and Hezbollah.
“We have abandoned the fields located far from our village, and cultivation has become limited to the fields surrounding our houses and in narrow spaces,” Salameh said while collecting dried tobacco leaves and packing them with a wooden press.
Tobacco production has decreased this year by more than 50 percent, and it could barely cover the costs, Salameh said, hoping for compensation from the government.
About 60 percent of farmers depend on this seedling for their livelihood, as it is their primary source of income, Salameh said.
Tensions along the Lebanon-Israel border escalated on Oct. 8, 2023, following a barrage of rockets launched by the Lebanese armed group Hezbollah toward Israel in solidarity with Hamas’ attack on Israel the day before. Israel then retaliated by firing heavy artillery toward southeastern Lebanon.
Early Sunday morning, Israeli and Hezbollah forces engaged in extensive exchanges of fire along the border, marking a significant escalation in their longstanding conflict.
Hezbollah announced it had launched hundreds of missiles into Israel in retaliation for the killing of its commander, Fouad Shokor, in an Israeli airstrike on Beirut last month.
In response, Israel reported conducting numerous preemptive airstrikes targeting Hezbollah’s rocket launchers in southern Lebanon.
Amidst the turmoil, tobacco farmers in those border villages were forced to abandon picking and drying their leaves.
“This is the first time in more than 40 years that I have abandoned tobacco cultivation in my fields,” Jamal Abdallah, a 60-year-old farmer displaced to the Lebanese city of Nabatieh from his hometown of Aitaroun, a border village in southern Lebanon, told Xinhua.
Abdallah said around 85 percent of tobacco farmers in southern Lebanon have left their fields due to the ongoing conflict.
“Only two out of 900 farmers in Aitaroun insisted on a dangerous adventure of cultivating tobacco this year in a minimal area,” he said, adding that tobacco cultivation has been passed on from generation to generation for many families in southern Lebanon.
According to an estimate by the Lebanese Regie for Tobacco (RLTT), a public organization controlled by the Lebanese Finance Ministry, there are between 15,000-16,000 families working in tobacco cultivation in southern Lebanon, covering an area of some 90 square km.
While the annual production usually exceeds 5 million kg, RLTT said initial estimates show this year’s production will dip to 2 million.
This season, a large percentage of farmers in 41 towns and villages located on the front line were unable to cultivate their lands for fear of Israeli bombing, said Nassif Saklawi, chairman and director general of RLTT.
“We are studying the possibility of compensation for farmers’ losses after reaching the border area and conducting an accurate field census,” he told Xinhua.
“The Regie decided to receive crops this year from farmers, exceptionally, a month and a half before the usual date … to reduce the storage burdens on farmers and help them generate liquidity amid the current difficult circumstances,” he said.
Meanwhile, Hassan Faqih, head of the Lebanese Tobacco Growers Syndicate, told Xinhua he is in contact with RLTT to pay farmers the same amount they have earned from last year’s production, with some increases if possible.
“We transferred the tobacco crop from the warehouses in the border area to warehouses in safe areas rented at the Regie’s expense,” said Jaafar al-Husseini, director of Agriculture and Procurement at RLTT.
“We have established agricultural nurseries to provide seedlings for free to farmers to encourage them to grow tobacco in their places of displacement until they can safely return to their villages and fields in border areas,” al-Husseini said. ■