The corporate food regime and Lebanon: Machgara and adverse incorporation

ABSTRACT

Despite low productivity in Lebanon’s agricultural economy, neglected for finance and service sectors, land and labor potential are very high. Literature on agrarian and food crises in Lebanon remains sparse in agrarian studies journals and retains a neoliberal developmentalist emphasis on food security rather than food sovereignty. Using the framework of food regime analysis, we analyze the historical developmental trajectory of the West-Beqaa village of Machgara, and how Lebanese family farmers are impacted by adverse incorporation into global capitalism. Placing farmer testimonies in the context of greater macro-historical chronologies, we see how reflections highlight patterns of commodification of land, labor and food.

KEYWORDS:

• Food sovereignty
• agroecology
• pluriactivity
• world systems
• agriculture
• Lebanon
• financial crisis

Acknowledgements

The authors of this paper would like to thank our reviewers for their insightful contributions to this paper as well as the working farmers whose experiences and knowledge provide the foundation for our understanding of this critical issue and topic.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Correction Statement

This article has been corrected with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Notes

1 Institute for International Finance Report, 2019

2 Congress, U.S., 1954 Hearings before Subcommittee of House Committee on Appropriations, Consisting of Messrs. Bingham, Gillett, Brick, Livingston, and Burleson. Charge of the Legislative, Executive, and Judicial Appropriation Bill for 1909.

3 Land abandoned because of shifting cultivation is excluded. World Bank 2021. Arable land (% of land area).

4 FAO 2016, 11

5 10 hectares is technically speaking far from a ‘large scale farm.’ It falls within the lower end of the range of medium-scale farms, typically categorized as those between 5 and 100 hectares.

6 At the time of interviewing, 5000 LBP was equivalent to $2, and 70,000 LBP about $25.

7 Two local farmer interviews testified to the tripling of prices for petrochemicals and tools such as farming shears due to the import dependency, which has made input prices soar and output prices lower than ever. In addition to no longer being able to sell their products on the market even pre-Covid, the level of hyperinflation in Lebanon reduced purchasing power by half by April 2020 and down to nearly a sixth by fall 2020 (FAO 2020).

8 As we speak (2023) the dollar hovers around 90,000 LPB.

9 The exploitation of land in the Beqaa covers 7% of surface area for agricultural exploitation, as opposed to 13% for Baalbek/Hermel and the South each, 16% for Nabatiyeh and North Lebanon each, 17% for Akkar, and 18% for Mount Lebanon (FAO 2016, 23).

10 FAO 2016.

11 FAO 2016.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Giuliano Martiniello

Giuliano Martiniello is Associate Professor of Political Science and Political Economy Université’ Internationale de Rabat and Adjunct Associate Professor at the Faculty of Agricultural and Food Sciences, American University of Beirut. He is broadly interested in the political economy, political sociology and political ecology of agrarian and environmental change. His research interests include land regimes, food and farming systems, large-scale land enclosures and contract farming, conservation and deforestation, rural social conflicts and agrarian movements in Africa and the Middle East

Julia Kassem

Julia Kassem is an Urban Planning and Policy graduate from the American University of Beirut, whose work and research specializes in the intersection of agriculture, ecology and political economy in the historical process and context of imperialism.