In 2019, the UNFAO 2020 Early Warning Action Report Lebanon is listed “On Watch" because of its economic crisis. Since then, the government monetary policy imploded in 2020 as falling public confidence has seen the supply of US dollars in the country dry up. Now, "hit by its worst economic crisis in modern history, there are fears the country is about to repeat the 1915-18 famine."(The Telegraph)

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The Lebanese are bartering possessions for food. "A quarter of the Lebanese population is in danger of dropping beneath the food poverty line in a country that relies on imported food and has little domestic agriculture."(Ahram)

 

Lebanon plunges into darkness with power outages that last as long as 23 hours in some regions. Private diesel generators now run the electrical grid, sending toxic fumes throughout the country which envelop Beirut in a toxic yellow haze. We find ourselves on the eve of 2023 with no elected president, a GDP that has shrunk by more than half and the Lebanese pound that trades on the black market at 42,000 to the dollar. The unrelenting  economic crisis has triggered an exodus as people are fleeing across the Mediterranean and an environmental disaster for those who stayed. Generators “are spewing loads of cancer-causing chemicals into the air… The level of toxic emissions has jumped three-fold since the crisis…and will mean an extra 550 cancer patients and 3,000 cases of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease each year.”(The Economist)

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Lebanon imports about 80% of its wheat from Russia and Ukraine and since the war in Ukraine, it struggles to meet that demand. Local wheat farmers did not receive promised wheat seeds because of a political quagmire, their plowed fields will remain bare. Such is a the crude injustice of a political system insensitive to its people at its most elemental level.

 

The pursuit of higher yields over the decades compromised the integrity of wheat seeds and yet there are many initiatives in the MENA region aimed at preserving and disseminating ancient varieties of wheat, barley, forage legumes and fruit trees. Their conservation is crucial in preserving their precious biodiversity and their cultural heritage. "More attention should be given to analyzing and conserving these traditional foods. Giving farmers the right incentives for planting and con-serving wheat landraces from the Levant, where they originated, and preserving buffer zones for wild crop relatives holds significant potential in this respect...Spreading awareness of the benefits of local food systems and the challenges that wheat
farmers face would encourage consumers to eat locally produced food."(JAFSCDSalwa Tohmé Tawk)

 

Supporting small farmers by helping them transition to a healthier agriculture is a necessary step. And encouraging domestic production of these varieties would help assuage the unstable nature of wheat seed procurement in MENA.

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