It is bewildering to watch international humanitarian organizations donate food packages to Lebanon – the Middle East’s most fertile lands. One can only wonder: What prohibits the Lebanese from investing in the richness of the land under their feet and enjoying the abundance it can produce? I can still remember how amazed I was watching the harvest in Marjeyoun’s fields as a child when visiting my grandparents in the summer. These valleys used to feed more than thirty-five villages located around them, and more. Today, these same valleys are left uncultivated and neglected. Worse, the whole ecosystem that used to exist no longer exists; the cultivators, the harvesters, the flour mills, the olive presses, the colorful wholesale market and of course, the entrepreneurs who introduced innovative techniques to increase and improve the crop. Since Lebanon’s independence our top-heavy and rentier minded government system has favored the capital, as well as
