ROME (AFP) - The UN food agency on Wednesday announced plans to help small farmers get back to work after months of interruption caused by last year’s war with Israel and unexploded ordnance in their fields.

An initial assessment by the Food and Agriculture Organisation after the war estimated damage and losses to the agricultural sector at 200 million euros (280 million dollars).

The munitions dropped by Israel included more than a million cluster bomblets, around 40 percent of which failed to detonate on impact, according to the United Nations.

The ordance has wounded more than 200 people since the end of the conflict last August 14, according to the UN Mine Action Coordination Centre (MACC), and at least 27 people have been killed, according to an AFP tally.

About half of southern Lebanon’s working population "relies wholly on agriculture for a living, with the sector providing nearly 70 percent of total household incomes," the FAO said in a statement.

Its 2.4 million euro (3.3 million dollar) programme will focus on horticulture and livestock to be funded by the UN Lebanon Recovery Fund.

"Fruit and vegetable farmers, most of whom are heavily indebted after losing their harvests and being forced to remain idle for months, will be provided with aid-in-kind — fertilizer, seeds and seedlings and with help to rehabilitate their greenhouses," the Rome-based FAO said.

"Livestock keepers who lost their animals will be helped to re-stock, while measures will be taken to improve productivity in affected areas," it added.

Only some 10 percent of the cluster bombs have been cleared allowing farming to resume in limited areas, according to the MACC in southern Lebanon.

Cluster munitions spread bomblets over a wide area from a single container. The bomblets often do not explode on impact, but can do so later at the slightest touch, making them as deadly as anti-personnel landmines.