The Annihilation of Lebanon's Livelihood: Food Insecurity in Lebanon
Image courtesy of Nabih El Boustani via Unsplash
From the onset of the financial crisis in Lebanon in the late 2010s, the Lebanese people have faced critical economic situations, exacerbated by the COVID-19 virus, the Beirut explosion incident, and the war in Ukraine. The annihilation of the Lebanese people’s livelihoods is demonstrated by the country’s increasing food insecurity. In December 2022, the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC), a standardized scale that was developed by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization's Food Security Analysis Unit (FSAU), delivered its first Acute Food Insecurity Analysis on Lebanon. It predicted that between January and April 2023, 1.46 million Lebanese residents and 800,000 refugees will be “in the ‘crisis’ phase or worse, needing urgent assistance.”
The 17 October Protests, a series of demonstrations following the collapse of the central bank in 2019, caused the country’s debt-to-GDP ratio to rise to an all-time high of 172%. Only a few months after the beginning of the Lebanese liquidity crisis, COVID-19 started to spread worldwide, and Lebanon was no exception. Like elsewhere in the world, many Lebanese businesses were forced to close down, leading to a failing local economy and a high unemployment rate. As reported by the UN, in 2021, 80 percent of the Lebanese population was in multidimensional poverty, which is a new measurement that takes into consideration factors beyond income, including access to education and healthcare.
From the start of the pandemic to today, increasing living costs and limited job opportunities restrict Lebanese residents from accessing food, water, and other basic necessities. In December 2021, food prices inflated by 400 percent and fuel prices tripled compared to the numbers in 2019. On October 9, 2021, Lebanon experienced a 24-hour power outage as the country's two largest power plants, Zahrani and Deir Ammar, ran out of fuel. Currently, the country's electricity companies can only provide electricity for a few hours a day, creating difficulties for families with kitchen devices that are dependent on electricity, like fridges and electric stoves. Areas populated by Syrian and Palestinian refugees, such as Akkar, Zahle, and Baalbek, have taken the most damage and become districts with the highest level of acute food insecurity. In addition to pre-existing poor living conditions in the refugee camps, inadequate intake of calories and nutrition and inability to use safe hygienic cooking methods cause even higher exposure to diseases and death rates.
Food security in the Middle East continues to be impacted by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Before the start of the war, in at least fifty MENA countries, including Lebanon, over 30 percent of the wheat was imported from Ukraine and Russia according to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the UN (FAO). Since Levantine cuisine is highly reliant on wheat products, such as baked goods, wheat is responsible for at least 38 percent of Lebanese people’s total calorie consumption. Since Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, Lebanon has not been able to import the same amount needed to sustain its people. Around the same time, in February, Lebanon’s economy minister said that “Lebanon has wheat reserves sufficient for one month at the most” because of the explosion in Beirut’s port in August 2020 that destroyed the capital’s grain silos. The country is stuck in a terrible situation where there is not enough reserved, locally produced, or imported food.
The history of colonialism and poor domestic agricultural development leaves Lebanon with a high dependency on imported goods. Albeit the high consumption of wheat locally, the Lebanese government is dependent on “domestic and foreign debt to subsidize up to 90 percent of the cost of wheat imports.” Although Lebanon and its farmers can grow wheat, the domestically grown varieties are not fit to produce the commonly consumed Arabic bread, which requires softer wheat. In 2019, the Ministry of Agriculture distributed free soft wheat seeds to farmers to promote more efficient uses of wheat production.
Even in the case of a higher efficient use of wheat, Lebanon still cannot supply its people with sufficient amounts of wheat, as it does not have enough arable farmland. Urban expansion and the consequences of global warming are greatly reducing the available agricultural land and affecting its yields of produce. With current farming practices, the government needs to ensure high productivity with investments in supplementary irrigation systems in response to the increasing temperature and dryness. These factors have consequently discouraged the farmers from planting high-maintenance crops with unpredictable yields, boosting the need to import produce from abroad as a more feasible option. Additionally, some Lebanese residents believed that “foreign-made is best”, therefore prioritizing imported goods over locally produced ones.
As the Chinese idiom goes: sustenance is of utmost importance to the people. As they have had to shift their priorities due to food insecurity, the Lebanese people persevered and returned to other local and more sustainable food sources. Residents noticed the “long abandoned agricultural terraces being cultivated”, plant nurseries started advocating for using “native seeds well-adapted to Lebanon’s climate conditions”, and high-end restaurants invested in zero-waste philosophy. In the short term, Lebanon does not have the ability to locally grow sufficient amounts of produce. However, in the possibility of gradual economic recovery, the government then needs to limit the import of certain crops to prompt growth in domestic production with supplementary assistance to the farmers. The international community should continue to support the people of Lebanon and refugees to ensure adequate distribution of food, sanitary products, and medical supplies.
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