In the field bordering the remnants of his home, Amin Akel Saad points to skeletal tobacco plants pushing up out of land burnt by Israeli bombs.
"Look at this field, Israeli planes dropped 30 bombs on it," said the elderly man. "Seventy years of work destroyed."
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For many farmers in south Lebanon, the 34-day war last year waged between Israel and Shiite Hezbollah militias meant ruin, or at best a meagre harvest.
In his fields around the village of Frun, 68-year-old Saad and his sons grow tobacco with an average annual harvest of five tonnes. That, along with some fields of wheat, maize, chick peas and sesame, is usually enough to provide for the 17 members of the extended family.
But the war, unleashed by Israel on July 12, 2006, largely destroyed the harvest in the fields near the Lebanese border with Israel.
The Saad family managed to salvage 800 kilogrammes (1,760 pounds).
This year, the family was forced to abandon part of its land because of the cluster bombs dropped by the Israelis, which spread more than a million bomblets, many of which did not explode on impact, making them as dangerous as landmines.
Instead, Saad has leased other fields to plant 15,000 square metres (about four acres) of tobacco.
It has hardly been worth the effort. In fields targeted by the Israeli air force, the burnt land can scarcely support a harvest and the return is expected to be very low.
"They've poisoned our land. Nothing can be done, not even with fertiliser. Where we used to harvest 20 kilogrammes, we are not getting more than one now," Saad said, forecasting a total of 400 to 500 kilogrammes for this year.
Cultivated by generation after generation, tobacco provides a living to some 16,000 families in Lebanon, mainly in the country's south.
The state tobacco company, which maintains a monopoly, "buys 5,200 tonnes a year, at eight dollars per kilo," says Nahla Slim, the firm's communications officer.
For Saad, the calculation is simple: "The harvest will bring around 3,300 dollars (2,400 euros)." From that sum must be taken the 1,200-dollar fee for leasing the land, plus pay for fertiliser and other expenses. After that, he said: "There will be practically nothing left."
Saad says the state has given him nothing, neither for his lost harvest nor for his house that was practically destroyed. "Not even one litre of fertiliser," he said.
An official with the state tobacco company, Hussein Berro, himself a farmer, commented: "On average, the harvest will be 20 percent below that of a normal year.
"Normally, the farmers made a profit. This year, they will have to do everything they can to come out all right. Those who can, lease fields to their neighbours. But the situation is catastrophic for everyone."
At Deir Syrian, close up to the frontier, another tobacco cultivator Hassan Karim reckons to harvest 650 kilogrammes compared with his normal 800 kilogrammes. That will reap an income of 4,300 dollars -- minus the 2,800 dollars he owes to the bank in two years.
His land still bears the marks of war.
"The plants don't grow, they are sick," comments Muna, Karim's wife, looking at the long stalks and the irregular spaces left in the soil where the plants have died shortly after pushing up from the earth.
Karim has another field which de-mining specialists have carefully checked to clear of the Israeli cluster bombs.
"But we daren't go there any more. We have heard of accidents in lands which have been de-mined," he said. Enditem
