The war’s impact on Lebanon’s food systems should scare everyone living in this tiny slice of land we proudly call a country. The reason it doesn’t is because Lebanon is already divided—not just by religion, income, or neighborhood, but along deeper lines of awareness and accountability. On one side, there is an apathetic majority that doesn’t care that Lebanon already imports 80 percent of its food needs, can afford to order food delivery and the inflationary costs of basic sustenance, have little interaction with the 2.7 million people in need of food assistance, and have yet to learn that food sovereignty is more important to national security than short-term economic gains. On the other, there are those actively fighting for food justice, dignity, and sustainability.
Lebanon’s Ministry of Agriculture (MoA) had been at the center of controversy for selling out the country’s natural resources to global industrial interests, but since Israel’s war on Lebanon restarted in March, many of its plans were quietly shelved. Gone are the press releases about its first-ever Agricultural Investment Conference in May 2026, the US$200 million World Bank-sponsored GATE loan signed last year, the 10-year national agriculture strategy, or the long-standing “Green Plan” to modernize agricultural infrastructure. Instead the MoA’s press releases reflect an agency scrambling to keep staple prices deflated—subsidizing potatoes for the country’s mega chip producers—and save face with angry local communities. The ministry issued one or two statements daily before March; since then, its press office has been unusually silent.
Still, one of the most important publications the MoA released was a statistical report delivered on March 28, revealing the terrifying reality of Israel’s aggression on agriculture: 77 percent of farmers had been displaced from the South, 22 percent of farmland damaged, 44,297 hectares destroyed in the war zone—including 30,761 hectares of olive trees and medium to large farms—55 percent of smallholder farms affected, presses and facilities abandoned, and more. The full report is available in English and Arabic.
To better understand the full impact of this shock on the South and Lebanon’s food systems, we reached out to AgriMovement, a Lebanese NGO helping farmers organize and making considerable noise about food sovereignty. Founded in 2017 as a reaction to the degrading infrastructure around food systems, its current leadership—under activists Sara Saloum and Bashar Abu Saifan—reflects a revolutionary spirit that understands the historical context and treats economy and ecology as inseparable struggles. We hope the following answers help put into perspective what this shock means for Lebanon’s population—both near and long term—and encourage readers to join the fight to protect Lebanon’s natural wealth and recognize who the real enemy is in this war for genuine sovereignty.
Bashar Abu Saifan and Sara Salloum, source: Marianne Dhenin
Do families remaining in the South have access to food and water, especially when bridges, roads, pipes, and farms have been destroyed?
Families who have chosen to remain in South Lebanon are facing catastrophic circumstances. The Israeli occupation has placed a deliberate and severe blockade on their most basic survival needs. For those choosing steadfastness over the humiliation of displacement, access to food and water has been systematically choked off by the enemy’s widespread destruction of critical infrastructure.
The destruction of the Tair Filsay bridge in the Tyre district, alongside severe damage to the Khardali-Dibbin roads and the later destruction of the sea bridge in Qasmiyeh, has effectively severed the connection between the areas north and south of the Litani River. This physical severing of transport arteries makes the delivery of life-saving supplies nearly impossible in high-risk zones, leaving critical humanitarian aid, such as hot meal programs, entirely unable to reach the decentralized populations trapped behind the front lines.
The bureaucratic nature of humanitarian aid, the reluctance of many organizations to deal with the Shia community and its leaders, and government neglect and business-as-usual corruption (being confirmed by whistleblowers as I write this paragraph) compound these impacts and are an obstacle to direct aid and community resilience.
Access to water has become an existential crisis. The Israeli aggression has deliberately destroyed at least 46 water facilities, directly depriving half a million residents of access to clean water. Infrastructural devastation is compounded by severe fuel shortages that have crippled water pumping stations nationwide, creating a terrifying threat of water-borne diseases and a total collapse in basic sanitation.
Crucial agricultural lifelines have not been spared; the Litani canal has been hit, directly threatening the irrigation of 6,000 vital hectares of farmland. In some areas, traditional lifelines like the Ras Ain spring have become largely inaccessible, with what little water remains being strictly reserved for drinking rather than sustaining crops.
The deliberate targeting of the agricultural heartland means that the local food system is effectively being erased. Thousands of hectares of fertile land have been scorched using internationally banned munitions like white phosphorus and depleted uranium, rendering the soil toxic and infertile for future seasons.
Satellite images map the scale of agricultural destruction, source: PAX
Furthermore, around 50,000 ancient olive trees (some estimates put it at ~300,000) have been destroyed, uprooted, and stolen, and 340,000 heads of livestock have been killed. For 75 percent of Southern farmers, this represents the brutal and total loss of their sole source of income, and could plunge the remaining population into starvation, using the same tactics used by the Israeli genocidal forces in Gaza.
At AgriMovement, we recognize that destroying food production is not collateral damage. It is a calculated political weapon to impose a total siege and break the autonomy of the people of the land. In the face of this systemic ecocide, we believe that producing locally and rebuilding our food systems from the ground up is the only viable act of defiance.
To support both the displaced and those remaining in the South, initiatives like our “Seeds of Sour” program in Tyre are fighting back by reclaiming public land for ecological farming. When faced with extreme water shortages, our team successfully connected this permaculture site to the municipal water network, drawing water from the Ras Al Ain spring using gravity-fed systems to bypass power outages. This intervention secured vital irrigation for emergency food crops, helping to alleviate severe water shortages for over 700 people in the nearby shelter complex. Every seed planted and every water pipe restored is a crucial step toward reclaiming our food sovereignty and ensuring that our communities can survive this barbaric siege.
Lebanon’s spring planting season is March-May, and MoA has said it has distributed 1.5 million vegetable seedlings. Is there any transparency whether these are GMO or hybrid seeds, and will global fertilizer shortage impact local production this season?
We are still investigating the nature of the distributed seedlings. However, MoA’s policy is to purchase seedlings from private nurseries that use F1 hybrid seeds, but not necessarily genetically modified. On the other hand, the distribution might be related to the new farmers’ register, launched by MoA late last year. Unfortunately, the register excludes refugee and migrant farmers and farmworkers. Syrian seasonal migrant farmworkers have been the backbone of Lebanon’s agriculture for decades.
Moreover, the problem with MoA’s distribution is not limited to subservience to multinationals. When asked about the security of the register’s data under Israeli ecocide that includes the theft of local heritage, a minister’s advisor mockingly replied: “Why bother? Israel knows everything,” reflecting the level of treason and capitulation reached by the US-imposed Lebanese government.
Last year, the government proposed a series of draft laws whose individual and collective impact would be detrimental to the lives and livelihoods of many marginalized and under-represented communities. The drafts regulating seeds, fishing, natural genetic resources, and beekeeping were of great concern, and AgriMovement is leading campaigns to stop them. We already succeeded in getting MoA to retract the seeds law. However, as with beekeeping, it is possible that they would revert to a series of administrative decisions to impose contentious provisions one by one. Needless to say, the laws show a systematic bias in favor of the private sector and against working people of all kinds, allowing multinationals to encroach on their meagre livelihood. The intentions became more apparent with the current government’s labor code reforms towards “flexibility,” raising the VAT, and shifting the burden of economic collapse following the government-supported banking ponzi-scheme to the poor.
Having said that, there is no tangible evidence that MoA has actually distributed 1.5 million vegetable seedlings, an enormous number relative to the industry. Institutional accountability and transparency in the management and distribution of aid intended for farmers are fully absent, and there’s a stark gap between official promises to update data and the reality on the ground. Aid has failed to reach a large number of those entitled to it, despite claims of distribution.
Heirloom seeds sold at a farmers market organized by AgriMovement, source: Margherita Monti
Global supply chain disruptions will surely have an impact, but there are two hidden sources of seedlings in Lebanon. The first is Syrian nurseries, from which seedlings are smuggled every season, where F1 seeds could be prevalent. The second is the large local industrial nursery business, agents of multinationals that manufacture hybrid and genetically modified seeds. These nurseries produce seedlings and sell them to farmers, along with seed germination services, plunging them into a cycle of debt.
Here, it is critical to focus on the importance of agricultural sovereignty and confronting the risks of dependence on the global market. That’s why we call for a return to local seeds and natural methods as a safeguard for local farmers against price fluctuations and dependence on foreign sources and the global market.
AgriMovement published a “Farming As Resistance” infographic and a statistic that agriculture generates 80 percent of the South’s GDP. What are the links between food sovereignty, resistance, and economy?
Agriculture in Southern Lebanon is the economic and cultural lifeblood of the region, generating 80 percent of the local GDP. When Israeli forces deliberately burn over 2,200 hectares of fertile land using banned munitions like white phosphorus, kill 340,000 heads of livestock, and destroy 46 vital water facilities, they are doing far more than causing collateral damage. They are executing a calculated strategy to sabotage the economic survival of an entire region. For 75 percent of Southern farmers, this systematic ecocide represents the brutal and total loss of their sole source of income.
Within this context, the links between the economy, resistance, and food sovereignty become inextricably bound. Destroying food production is deployed as a political weapon to impose a total siege and break the autonomy of the local population. Lebanon already imports more than 80 percent of its food supply, a massive dependency that leaves us dangerously vulnerable to the global market, economic blackmail, and external blockades.
Israel has intentionally attacked the seeds reproduction facilities of major crops like wheat and other cereals. Spraying fields with glyphosate, white phosphorus and other chemicals. Grain silos were destroyed. The land borders with Syria which is a main food supplier to Lebanon are being threatened by bombing, reducing traffic by more than 90 percent. The destruction of bridges isolates more than 22 percent of agricultural land in Lebanon. These logistical disruptions hindered the distribution of basic needs to the people still living in the South and Bekaa.
Additional challenges include rising fuel prices and lack of protection for farmers and food producers and consumers. The aid to the farmers is linked to the farmers’ register which only allows Lebanese farmers.
The food parcels distributed to the displaced are not sourced from the farmers. Few initiatives emerged to answer this challenge, yet this must be nationalized. As “from the Farmer to the Displaced” and not from “the Importer to the Displaced” through international conditional aid.
The nutritional value of the distributed aid is colonized. Calories, proteins, and vitamines are counted and limited upon an outsider’s perspective and approach which proved to be a colonial one in Gaza and led to the starvation and was a hidden weapon used in the genocide.
A destroyed storage facility at a seed bank in Hebron, the West Bank, source: Union of Agricultural Work Committees
The policies of the government favor international companies opening the doors of our food system to be directed towards their profit. Even their profit made from our fields are not stored or reinvested in the Lebanese economy. It is all based on the export policies. Our economy, our lands, our labor, our farmers, our soil, our water—all these resources are all being pushed into the hands of multinationals through monopolies and exclusion.
This is why AgriMovement frames Farming As Resistance. Under the weight of military aggression and economic collapse, every single seed planted becomes an act of defiance. Planting is an active, strategic method to disrupt the weaponization of food; it is a direct form of resistance by the people of the land who refuse to be starved or uprooted. By continuing to cultivate the soil, farmers ensure that the community’s economic foundation remains intact, completely redefining agricultural labor as a frontline defense of national dignity.
Food sovereignty acts as the ultimate guarantor of this resistance. At its core, food sovereignty demands that local communities control their own food systems, freeing themselves from exploitative dependencies. AgriMovement champions the use of traditional, heirloom seeds because they are completely reproducible. This allows farmers to replant every season independently, breaking the cycle of debt that comes with relying on costly, annual purchases of patented seeds from global multinational corporations. These native seeds carry the memory of our land and remain the only true guarantee of our food freedom.
Furthermore, history has repeatedly shown that agricultural infrastructure and seed banks are treated as military targets, as witnessed with the 2003 US bombing of Iraq’s central seed bank and the 2025 destruction of local seed banks in al-Khalil, Palestine. To counter this, multiplying local seed stocks, supporting decentralized community nurseries, and moving production to safe zones are vital strategies to protect our sovereignty.
Ultimately, we cannot separate a region’s economic survival from its ability to feed itself. By protecting the farmers who drive 80 percent of the South’s economy, distributing heirloom seeds, and promoting localized, agroecological farming, AgriMovement is building a resilient system that resists both military siege and corporate monopoly. Farming is how we reclaim our land, protect our livelihoods, and secure an autonomous future for generations to come.
AgriMovement’s original infographic Farming As Resistance, source: AgriMovement
How has AgriMovement’s campaign with Jeyetna to provide hygiene kits to Tyre been received? What support can people contribute?
As with all the grassroots aid campaigns we joined, the reception was encouraging. However, the need is growing, especially in besieged Sour, and we can use all the support we can get. People can donate to the campaign through this crowdfunding link: https://fundahope.com/en/campaigns/support-menstrual-kits-access-for-displaced-women.
We understand that many supporters might not be able to provide financial support. However, it would be very helpful if they shared the campaign with local or university feminist groups and solidarity campaigns.
It seems the MoA’s controversial Seed and Fisheries laws were paused, are you worried the government will try to fast-track these again under the guise of an emergency? How can the public push for the National Agriculture Strategy (2026-2035) to prioritize small-scale farmers over corporate monopolies?
Nothing is beneath the current regime and its ministers. But the campaigns late last year made it clear that the laws were unpopular and that they are under strict scrutiny by grassroots organizations and farmers’ and fishers’ groups who continue to mobilize and resist corporate encroachment.
The push for a National Agriculture Strategy is on two fronts. On the one hand, the discourse about agriculture and food sovereignty continues to be developed along with public awareness surrounding it. Many legislators and decision-makers have indicated their concern about the lack of a national discussion of such matters, even in Parliament, which creates an opportunity to educate them about the matter.
The same goes for influential actors in civil society, including international NGOs and other resource gatekeepers, whose social commitment tends to be subverted by proximity to power and big money. They must take responsibility for what their governments are imposing on the people they claim to be helping—including the EU’s attempts to turn its Mediterranean neighborhood into a back garden and exploit its farmers and agricultural heritage to be sold in European markets for profits made throughout the supply chain, except by those who actually produce the food and other products.
AgriMovement leads strategic advocacy campaigns against restrictive, corporate-driven national seed laws (such as those aligned with UPOV 1991) that attempt to criminalize traditional seed-saving practices and enforce intellectual property monopolies over nature.
On the other hand, we try to provide examples for food sovereignty through a holistic, on-the-ground process that encompasses social organizing, agroecological transitions, seed preservation, and the establishment of solidarity-based economies. This process is founded on the uncompromising defense and multiplication of heirloom seeds.
We try to provide examples inspired by local and global efforts, from farmer-managed living seed banks and community nurseries to building an actionable knowledge base for farmers and activists. In local initiatives like “Seeds of Sour”, for example, unique indigenous varieties of basil and watermelon are meticulously collected, tested, preserved, and propagated. These seeds are then distributed to farmers for free or through peer-to-peer exchange networks, effectively breaking the costly, debt-inducing cycle of dependency on imported, patented, and sterile hybrid seeds.
True food sovereignty means democratizing the agricultural sector and dismantling systems of oppression. Thus, we also focus on centering the most vulnerable actors in the food system, such as Syrian refugee women farmworkers, as well as Palestinian refugees and local youth, young farmers, and young scientists. In the Lebanese context, food sovereignty is ultimately a political process of decolonization under occupation, imperial aggression, and internal collaborationism that must be fought on all fronts.
Projection of food insecurity for 2026 showing the majority of people facing food insecurity in Lebanon live in the North, South, and Bekaa regions, source: IPC
Hala (Halo) Srouji
Hala (Halo) Srouji is a writer and production manager with a background in editing, journalism, and sustainability. With over two decades of experience in communications and media across the Middle East and the U.S., she curates cross-disciplinary editorial projects that spotlight cultural dialogue, creative collaboration, and environmental awareness. Hala is currently managing and facilitating part of Fann w Fenjen’s interviews with and between artists, bringing a unique and new perspective to artist visibility in media
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