Lebanese agro-industrialists discuss challenges and opportunities in times of crisis

ENAR

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 needs and that even what we produce locally is reliant on imported items, be it in the packaging or raw material. Amidst the ongoing economic crisis, now compounded by the coronavirus crisis, prices on a wide range of imported and locally produced food items (based on individual and collective observations)—including basics like potatoes, pasta, and rice—are on an increasing trajectory, while consumers’ purchasing power is simultaneously decreasing. Back in November 2019, the World Bank warned that, if the economic situation continued to worsen, 50 percent of Lebanese could be living below the poverty line. With