Reading Time: 6 minutes The planned Bisri Dam and reservoir is but one component of the World Bank-funded Greater Beirut Water Supply Project (GBWSP) that claims it will increase short-term supply of potable water to Greater Beirut by 250,000 cubic meters per day (m3/d) with approximately 1.6 million residents expected to benefit, including 460,000 low-income residents. The GBWSP goes…
Q&A with Kamal Mouzwak on the impact of COVID-19 on Tawlet and Souk El Tayeb
Reading Time: 5 minutes After being closed down starting March 11 for almost eight weeks, due to measures taken in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, Lebanon’s restaurants were allowed to re-open on May 4 as part of a phased easing of the lockdown. To learn more about considerations F&B operators were taking into account before reopening, Executive chatted beforehand…
Food insecurity in Lebanon
Reading Time: 6 minutes As Lebanon weathers through an economic crisis and COVID-19 outbreak, food insecurity has become a major concern across media headlines and in society. More stories are surfacing on how many families can no longer afford to meet their food needs, raising questions on the future of Lebanon’s fragile food sector. What is food security, and…
Growing trend of individual or community planting in Lebanon
Reading Time: 7 minutes As prices of both imported and locally produced food items continue to increase and Lebanon’s food security is potentially threatened (see articles on agro-industry and food security), the old Lebanese proverb “fellah mekfi, sultan mikhfi”—which roughly translates to “a satisfied farmer is really a sultan”—rings true. Knowing how and being able to grow one’s own…
Lebanon needs to lower its import dependency
Reading Time: 6 minutes My grandfather died in 2016 at the age of 103. He survived two world wars, the Great Famine of Mount Lebanon (1916 – 1918), and the Lebanese Civil War. A few years before he died, I was with him as he read the newspaper and he turned to me and said: “Are you storing wheat?…
Lebanese agro-industrialists discuss challenges and opportunities in times of crisis
Reading Time: 12 minutes Gibran Khalil Gibran’s poem Pity the Nation, published in 1933, could almost have been written about lockdown in modern day Lebanon. Most prophetic is the line “pity the nation that eats a bread it does not harvest.” Lebanon is indeed far from harvesting its own bread, given that we import 85 percent of our food…
Economic and coronavirus crises threaten Lebanon’s already fragile food security
Reading Time: 7 minutes For almost anyone residing in Lebanon, trips to the supermarket have become laced with a vague sense of apprehension. The more privileged may wonder how much the price of their favorite brand of imported cereal is now (as prices have been inflating since the last quarter of 2019), or if indeed it is still found…
Q&A with Nadine Khoury, COO of Robinson Agri, on how COVID-19 has impacted agriculture
Reading Time: 5 minutes Lebanon’s ongoing economic crisis has highlighted the importance of well-functioning productive sectors—namely agriculture and industry—to a country’s GDP and economic well-being. This was further emphasized with the COVID-19 global pandemic significantly slowing down trade, disrupting food supply chains, and forcing each country to think of its own supply needs first. Executive spoke with Nadine Khoury,…
Holy guacamole
Reading Time: 6 minutes In summer 2018, McKinsey & Company, a United States-based management consulting firm hired by the Lebanese government to design an economic plan for the country, presented their report to government officials. Though the final report has yet to be made public, some details have made their way from government officials into the public sphere. From…
The thyme trailblazers
Reading Time: 6 minutes A heavenly aroma greets you when passing by a bakery; tangy flavors linger on your taste buds long after you have swallowed that last bite. Yes, we are talking about zaatar—the faithful companion of the man’ousheh, a Lebanese breakfast favorite. Jordan, Syria, and Lebanon each have their own versions of zaatar, mixing different herbs and…
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