A homegrown shortfall

  The need for security is a constant refrain among Lebanese politicians and journalists, who tend to intone that it has something to do with ministers meeting their maker on a Sunday drive to the mountains, or with the ongoing drama with the country’s southern neighbor. But there is another danger that goes beyond bombs and blasts which policy makers have both ignored and neglected: food security. Without going into elements of nutritional content and purchasing power dynamics in depth, food security is commonly accepted to require both availability and access to food. Food sovereignty, on the other hand, focuses on the “right” of people in their respective countries to define the systems that feed them rather than having them subject to international market pressures. The surging price of wheat, and the government’s costly measures to dull the effects provide the most recent reminder of Lebanon’s vulnerability. Last year, Russia