IAAT/DEIR AL-AHMAR, Lebanon: It’s destruction season in the Bekaa Valley. Caravans of army trucks and civilian tractors rumble through the area, upturning massive fields of illegally grown cannabis.

But as they pass by one plot in Iaat, ripe with green cannabis plants that reach several meters high, a curious thing happens. Some of the soldiers wave. The cannabis farmers wave back from among the stalks, muttering unkind words. And then the caravan drives on, leaving the field untouched.

The waving farmers, Mahmoud and Hassan, haven’t bribed the cannabis eradicators, a method that is rumored to be the only way to stave off eradication. In fact, their cannabis is legal. They’re growing industrial hemp, a variety of cannabis that contains little or no THC, the component of the plant that is a drug. These farmers are one-third of the planting arm of a UNDP project that aims to help farmers replace the illegal drug with its legal cousin.

The fertile Bekaa Valley is rife with illegal cannabis. Planting hit an all-time high during the Civil War, when it is said that as many as 160,000 dunums (one dunum is around 1,000 square meters) were cultivated in the late 1980s. In 1992 the government banned the drug and began destroying crops. But farmers continued to grow, and the army, with its subcontracted local tractors, continues to plow.

There have been multiple attempts to give the valley’s farmers alternatives to cannabis, including one failed USAID project in the 1990s. Sunflowers, saffron, capers and tobacco are all among the ranks of mostly abandoned alternative crops. UNDP got into the game in 2007, importing the hemp seeds and testing them scientifically under various conditions.

One way that this latest alternative crop differs from its predecessors is in its similarity to the crop most farmers already grow. Hemp has the same distinctive leaf shape as marijuana, but it is a lighter green and less bushy than the variety that can be smoked. Hemp also requires approximately the same growing conditions as the drug.

Mahmoud, a tall languid farmer from Iaat who did not want to give his last name, has planted 8 dunums of hemp this year. He says “the entire Bekaa plain from Zahle until Hermel … has the best climate for planting marijuana.” In 1992, he says, “they banned planting marijuana and they told us they would give us a substitute.” But nothing worked.

He says he continued to plant cannabis annually, until “every year they used to send soldiers and the government wanted to destroy plantations in our village. They created so many problems for us we stopped planting.”

Other farmers, including some involved in the program, plant both illegal and legal cannabis.

Ghassan, a farmer from Deir al-Ahmar who also declined to publish his last name, says planting marijuana has become increasingly risky, which is why he got involved in the UNDP program. “I don’t want to plant cannabis [anymore], because it makes me worried,” he says. “It keeps me from sleeping at night.”

He has 10 people living in his roomy house, and says that “if I didn’t have children and a family I would plant [illegal cannabis],” but “the police may come at any time and knock on my door to hunt me down.”

Planting cannabis is also risky financially. Ghassan says these days a farmer can make $1,300 for a dunum of processed cannabis. But a season’s work and investment can also vanish in a few minutes with eradication.

Dominique Choueiter, an agricultural engineer and UNDP’s project coordinator, hopes hemp might become both a viable and reliable crop for the Bekaa. Although it won’t rival the prices offered by the illegal drug market, the hope is that it may produce a guaranteed annual and long-term income.

Industrial hemp can be made into a variety of products, including construction material, animal bedding, fabric and cosmetics. Its seeds, rich in the healthy Omega 3 and Omega 6 oils, can be ground and turned into milk. When eaten raw they taste a bit like fatty almonds, albeit smaller and reeking of marijuana.

Choueieter says that previous alternative crops didn’t catch on because of lack of local demand, and hemp currently faces the same problem.

“There is no local demand for it,” says Choueiter. “Nobody knows about it yet.” The UNDP is currently investigating how to increase the product’s visibility, and tapping into the international market hasn’t been ruled out.

There are a few legal complications. A 1956 drug law in the country distinguishes between industrial hemp and illegal cannabis, but a 1998 law on the books does not. Lebanon has signed an international convention that allows hemp cultivation, and Choueiter says this should overrule the 1998 law.

The program has the backing of the Interior Ministry, and that’s why the signs prohibiting eradication on the hemp plots have so far been successful. But Choueiter has had problems importing seeds because of confusion at the customs authority. The seeds look and smell similar to those used to plant illegal cannabis.

If the legal ambiguity can be overcome, farmers themselves are enthusiastic. This is largely because the government’s current policy of eradication doesn’t get to the root of the problem.

“We don’t have a substitute,” says Mahmoud. “We also don’t have a school or a hospital … All of these people who are planting, they aren’t dealers,” he says. “They are planting just in order to survive.”

“People in this area are completely dependent on marijuana to live,” he says. “Everyone wants this hemp industry to work out. We hope it works out.”