Hanna, the owner of an olive field in the border town of Rmeish, told Sky News Arabia, “The prolongation of the war has increased the difficulties. We fear for our livelihoods just as we fear for our families. The winter season is approaching and the olives are on the trees. We go to the field secretly and without taking our families to help pick the olives for fear of… Missiles and missiles.
Assaf, the owner of an olive press, told Sky News Arabia, “The losses are huge, reaching 70 percent compared to previous years.”
The mayor of the town of Al-Mari, near the Marjayoun border plain, told Sky News Arabia, “Nearly 60 percent of the farmers were unable to harvest their crops along the border strip.”
a fire
According to what the Caretaker Minister of Agriculture, Abbas Al-Hajj Hassan, confirmed to Sky News Arabia, “More than 45,000 olive trees have been damaged by phosphorous missiles, and the number is increasing daily.”
Farmer Nadeema Zahra told Sky News Arabia, “We did not leave our home in the village of Al-Habbariyah on the border, because we are responsible for harvesting the olive season. This is our livelihood and we make a living from it.”
She added, “Two days ago, my husband and I survived an Israeli raid in the field next to our field. It was a very terrifying moment. We left everything we had collected and left for fear of a second raid.”
She explained, “We find it very difficult to reach the field and we harvest the olive crop as if we were stealing. We turn right and left and move away from the car when we hear the sound of spy planes.”
Zahra complained about the lack of labor to pick the olives, because the border towns were mostly devoid of their residents and even the Syrian refugees who were helping in the picking.
Farmer Othman Hajoul from the border town of Al-Habbariyah said in an interview with Sky News Arabia, “Labor is scarce in the region and wages are high. It has reached $20 for 4 hours of work. We fear that we will endanger the safety of the workers in the orchards, as we have been subjected to bombing for days in the hills.” “Kfarshouba, we fear that we will cause harm to others.”
Hajoul continued, “We used to collect olive oil at home and sell it outside the region. Currently, we were not even able to pick the olives before pressing them to produce local oil. We try every day to arrive, and sometimes we return halfway.”
He concluded, “The loss per can of oil is about 50 US dollars.”
Farmer Ali Zahra, a resident of the border town of Shebaa, told our website, “We were bombed while trying to go to our land and the olive grove. We hid among the rocks at the towns of Al-Habbariyah and Kafar Shuba, going up towards Shebaa, for an hour, until we were able to reach our homes. These were very terrifying moments.”
Zahra added, “We have an olive tree grove on the outskirts of the Bastra Farm liberated from Israel, which belongs to the Shebaa Farms near the Kfar Shuba Hills, but we lost it this year and we do not know if it burned or not.”
He continued, “Our losses this season are large and may amount to approximately 50 oil cans, and this is a major financial loss for the season.”
This reality negatively affected the olive and oil production season in the south of the country, especially since a large number of farmers were unable to reach their fields to harvest the crop due to these attacks and their dangers to their lives, according to the Lebanese minister.
Olive cultivation is considered essential in Lebanon, as approximately 13.5 million trees are planted, constituting about 5.4 percent of the country’s area of 10,452 square kilometers, and these trees produce between 100 and 200 thousand tons of olives annually.
About 30 percent of these crops are used as olives on the dining table, while the remaining 70 percent is extracted from oil, with the annual quantity ranging between 15 thousand and 25 thousand tons, of which about 5 thousand tons are exported, according to official data.
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