“Usually vulnerable participants
care more about what kind of activities will be implemented and if these
will be of any help to them. They have priorities other than saving the
environment. However, the ESDU approach is always environmentally
friendly and sustainable,” Karam says.
Each participant received at least 40 hours of training. “Training
sessions were held in municipal building classrooms and on-site on farms
and fields. They were attended by both men and women,” Karam says.
Women dominated the food processing courses (how to make dairy products,
sun dry fruits, etc.) and men the livestock and herd management ones.
In total, 829 participants (of which 63 percent were women) received
training. “We did follow-up focus groups with most of the participants.
Most of them were very, very happy with the training.”
Kassem El Chab, a farmer who owns a plot of land in Northern Bekaa
and comes from an agricultural family, has been receiving training from
FAFS faculty and ESDU staff since the 1990s. “They have always been very
good. They have a lot of scientific knowledge and know how to
communicate with the local people,” El Chab says. Through CLIMAT, he
learned best practices for sun-drying vegetables and fruits. “It worked
very well.”
In response to the current economic crisis, Ardi Ardak, a National
Food Security Initiative, was launched in December 2019 by ESDU in
partnership with the Lebanese League for Women in Business (LLWB), the
Food Heritage Foundation (FHF), and Ziko House. This initiative aims to
promote the local food system by supporting small-scale producers,
focusing especially on women and young people. Ardi Ardak complements
ESDU’s capacity building projects by helping small-scale producers, like
those who participated in CLIMAT, market their products and sell at
farmers markets, specialty shops, supermarkets, online, and eventually,
abroad.
“A central piece of Ardi Ardak is to use high-quality crops, because
we can’t compete [with large food-exporting countries] on scale.” Also
key is the production and packaging of food products. Instead of selling
green beans, producers might sell ready made lubya bi zeit
(green beans braised in olive oil). They might add herbs to their
cheese, create new jam mixes, or make energy bars out of local raw
materials. Volunteers are also making use of Ardi Ardak’s networks to
support vulnerable communities by distributing seedlings and food
parcels to households in need.
To fund projects like CLIMAT and to
further strengthen Ardi Ardak networks, Hamadeh and the ESDU team are
working to attract investors. MainGate spoke with one of them,
former President of the Lebanese League for Women in Business Asma Zein.
Zein first engaged ESDU to teach the farmers working her family’s land
in Deir Al Harf how to grow pesticide-free fruits and vegetables. That
experience pushed her to help fundraise for ESDU’s initiatives. “I
decided to spread the word, to think about how to approach landowners,
to encourage the planting on unused land in a sustainable way,” Zein
says.
Through Ardi Ardak, she hopes to eliminate intermediaries between
farmers and wholesalers or exporters to help farmers become more
profitable and sustainable. “We encourage producers to stay put [and not
leave for the city], and to involve their kids in their work. And we
teach them what to plant because what you plant in the south is
different from what you plant in the north and Beqaa.”
Both Zein and Hamadeh lament the lack of public sector support for
agriculture in Lebanon. “We have no farm bill here,” Hamadeh explains,
referring to the omnibus bill that funds American agriculture. “The
budget allocated for the Ministry of Agriculture is less than 1 percent
of the government’s budget, and the GDP share of agriculture is less
than 4 percent, having fallen from 10 percent in the 1970s.” This lack
of support coupled with an import-oriented economy has led to bizarre
arrangements. “We would buy chickpeas from the States and make hummus,
but now, with the economic crisis, those factories are saying they want
to buy locally.”
Hamadeh believes the current economic situation and growing global
awareness about the unsustainability of industrial-scale,
pesticide-heavy agribusiness will translate into greater support for
ESDU’s agenda. That CLIMAT won the Khalifa International Award for Date
Palm and Agricultural Innovation in 2020 is evidence of that support.
Hamadeh says that the ultimate goal is to develop “a kind of network
between the landlords, small farmers, and private investors” that
supports farm-to-table supply chains across the country. “We already
have a setup. We have established different projects, a whole
infrastructure, and now it’s time to scale it up at the national level.”