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…
Technology and agriculture meet in Agrytech
Reading Time: 8 minutes There is a need for innovation and R&D in the agro-industry sector in Lebanon and the region. Agrytech, a program by Berytech focusing on innovations in agriculture, was created to address this need. It has four major pillars including an accelerator program and an agri-food innovation cluster. Agrytech was promoted to university students and graduates…