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| For Lebanese Farmers, Weed Is Again the Crop |
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Posted by FoM on July 19, 2001 at 08:02:09 PT By Michael Slackman, Times Staff Writer Source: Los Angeles Times 
For seven years, Abu Mohammed tried to support his wife and five children by growing melons. But there was never enough water, and even when weather conditions were good, no one wanted to buy his produce. So now he's cultivating a crop sure to sell: Cannabis sativa, the spiky, olive green plant used to produce hashish. "To us, this is just a crop," Abu Mohammed said as he checked his plot, stretching the length of a football field alongside the main road in this sunburned valley in northeastern Lebanon. Snipped Home Comment Email Register Recent Comments Help |
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Comment #3 posted by desertshaman on July 23, 2001 at 01:28:52 PT:
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| If the government said, 'OK, we are going to compensate the farmers because of the hashish,' you will see next year 10 times hashish grown more than this year," he said. "If we do that, then we are saying to the people who did not grow hashish and who believed in the law that they have been stupid" i cant believe the govt thinks that way in lebanon. if u compensate someone for not growing cannabis adequately so they can support themsleves, they wouldnt grow other crops! thats why they havent grown weed for 10 yrs- coz they were waiting for compensation! [ Post Comment ] |
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Comment #2 posted by lookinside on July 19, 2001 at 19:22:17 PT:
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| i wish the governments of lebanon and other famous cannabis producing countries would realize that the united states will bully, but never live up to it's promises... they should ENCOURAGE the production of cannabis, thumb waging war(i think ali means it too..)on your own people [ Post Comment ] |
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Comment #1 posted by kaptinemo on July 19, 2001 at 08:44:05 PT:
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| The economics of the situation are so brutally simple that you'd have to be a simpleton not to grasp them: "They say that if the government tries to stop them, there will be bloodshed. "I am serious," said Ali, a 50-year-old with 11 children who, like other cannabis farmers, asked that his last name not be used. "If I am going to die, I want to die defending myself." This is not the voice of greed; it's the voice of desperation. "After a decade of promises from the government and the West, his neighbors have given up waiting. "My family has been 10 years without anything--we had to grow hashish," said Monsiour, 25. "People are going hungry. If they try to stop us, we have our weapons. We will have war. There will be victims." As I said in an earlier post concerning the campesinos in Colombia, the same goes for the fellaheen of Lebanon: Never mess with people with nothing left to lose. ""They think hunger is only what happens in Africa?" said Ali, the farmer ready to defend his cannabis fields. Farmers here say they made an effort to grow legitimate crops but could barely even cover their costs. Ali said it costs $100 to produce a ton of cannabis, which he can sell for $2,800 to $3,000. By comparison, he said, he spends $500 to grow a ton of onions, which he can then sell for $100, if he can find a buyer. Because dim-witted pols and their equally clueless anti brethren in the developed world can see only what they want to see, they keep missing the main point. A point which the farmer above has made quite simple and easily understood: creating a black market inflates the price of what would, if legal, be worth less than the 'legitimate' crops he and others tried to grow but found few buyers for. It's just a weed, remember; it doesn't require much agrarian 'capital' (labor, fertilizers, etc.) to grow. The same cannot be said of tobacco, which is very labor and capital intensive. The farmers of the Bekaa have said the same thing farmers around the world have said since the beginning of the Drug war: CROP SUBSTITUTIONS DON'T WORK. [ Post Comment ] |
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