1.2 million people expected
to face acute food insecurity

The agriculture sector needs years of rehabilitation

More than one million people are expected to face a food insecurity crisis in the months ahead as a result of renewed conflict and mass displacement, according to data released the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification(IPC) – a global hunger monitor. It has found that 1.24 million will be unable to consistently meet basic food needs and will be forced to reduce the quality and quantity of foods consumed, or resort to harmful coping strategies to survive.

“These results underscore the severity of the current situation where conflict intersects with economic pressures putting national food security under critical risk and juncture,” Nora Ourabah Haddad, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations’ (FAO) representative in Lebanon told Reuters.

The IPC said that the agricultural sector, once a critical source of food and income, has suffered from damage to farmland, displacement of farmers and rising input costs.

More than three quarters of farmers in the South have been displaced and 22 percent of all agricultural land damaged in the latest bout of fighting, according to the Ministry of Agriculture (MoA).

It is not clear how many will be able to return after a shaky ceasefire took hold earlier this month, reducing but not entirely halting hostilities. “[After] a war like this war, the agriculture sector would need years and years of rehabilitation,” said MoA to Reuters. The sector had not yet fully recovered from the 2024 war the conflict began, hiking costs of diesel on which most farmers rely for their equipment. The previous war cost the agricultural sector $586 million in losses and destroyed nearly 5,000 hectares of forest cover, according to the National Council for Scientific Research.