August 6, 2018
Rachel Bahn and Sibelle El Labban, American University of Beirut
Fatma Abdelaziz, IFPRI
A robust dialogue on food policy that involves multiple stakeholders is critical to advancing food and nutrition security. This message was made abundantly clear through a launch event for IFPRI’s 2018 Global Food Policy Report (GFPR), held at the American University of Beirut (AUB) on July 3, 2018.
The event entitled “Launch of the IFPRI 2018 Global Food Policy Report: Food Security from Global to MENA” was hosted by AUB’s Faculty of Agricultural and Food Sciences and Food Security Program in collaboration with IFPRI. This was one in a series of launches that have been held in major cities around the globe including Washington, Rome, Beijing, New Delhi, and soon Cairo. The event’s primary purpose was to present the 2018 GFPR – which reviews the major food policy issues, developments, and decisions of 2017, and highlights challenges and opportunities for 2018 at the global and regional levels – to the local audience of nearly 100 participants including faculty, students, alumni, and external guests from the private sector; from organizations including the Food and Agriculture Organization, the World Food Programme, and the International Center for Agricultural Research in the Dry Areas; and from NGOs and civil society. The theme of this year’s report is the recent rise in Antiglobalism, a topic that is relevant to Lebanon, a small, generally open-market economy that imports a significant portion of its food requirements and therefore relies on trade for its food security. The country has struggled with the effects of the ongoing conflict in Syria, including disruption to its regional trading patterns and significant refugee inflows.
The Beirut launch event featured two speakers: Clemens Breisinger, senior research fellow and IFPRI’s country program leader in Egypt, highlighted the global themes of this year’s GFPR. Breisinger opened the seminar and set the stage for further discussion with his statement that, ““If globalization is managed well, then it can really help improving the lives of all people. However, we have been witnessing a rise in anti-globalization and that’s because globalization has not only produced winners.” While globalization has brought significant benefits in terms of poverty reduction and improvements in food security, globalization has also had negative impacts including worsening inequality. If globalization is to advance, it must be managed to the benefit of more people or else risk further reaction and rejection. Next, Nadim Khouri, an independent researcher focused on food security and an advisor to IFPRI, presented relevant findings for the Middle East and North Africa region. Conflict-affected countries of the region have experienced reversals of progress in achieving food and nutrition security; meanwhile, non-conflict countries of the region have continued to make progress and adopt food policy reforms, though these countries could do more to support advances across the region. Looking to the future, Khouri cautioned that MENA will not be the focus of the global debate around food insecurity and hunger, and therefore the region will have to address its own needs, through a combination of sound agricultural policy and trade, to ensure its forward movement.
The speakers were then joined for a panel discussion by Majida Mcheik, Head of the Program Department at the Lebanese Ministry of Agriculture and an Advisor to the Minister; Nassib Ghobril, Chief Economist and Head of the Economic Research & Analysis Department at Byblos Bank SAL; Marwan Mikhael, Head of Research and Investment Banking at BLOMINVEST Bank; and Lamis Jomaa, Assistant Professor at the Department of Nutrition and Food Sciences at the Faculty of Agricultural and Food Sciences. The discussion that followed raised vigorous debate on the current structure and priorities of Lebanese agri-food policies, including production subsidies; the appropriate roles for government and the private sector in fostering growth and investment in the agri-food sector; and divergent views of agriculture as a productive economic sector versus as a source of livelihoods for producers, small farmers, and rural households.
According to Mcheik, the Ministry of Agriculture is prioritizing efforts to promote and improve the competitiveness of Lebanese agri-food exports, with a particular focus on improving food quality and safety to align with the standards of target markets. She explained that Lebanon remains outside of the World Trade Organization (WTO) as it is not ready to compete within a system that systematically benefits more powerful actors including the United States and the European Union. Mcheik acknowledged that the agricultural sector is not currently a policy priority for the Lebanese government despite the challenges that have followed from the Syrian crisis, and recommended that the sector be the focus of renewed attention under the new government and Council of Ministers, following elections in spring 2018.
Ghobril highlighted the Lebanese government’s inability to provide basic and timely data concerning the agri-food sector needed to inform evidence-based policies to guide the agri-food sector. He explained that investment in Lebanon’s agricultural sector has declined in recent years, mirroring the decline in the contribution of the agricultural sector to the wider economy (gross domestic product or GDP). Commercial bank lending to the agricultural sector is limited by the widespread informality of the sector and by risks including physical insecurity in certain areas of Lebanon.
In his intervention, Mikhael discussed the critical role of farmers and rural development: He argued that the agri-food sector is both a productive economic sector and a source of livelihoods for producers, small farmers, and rural households. He called policy-makers to recognize both of these roles and consider the potential impacts of policies accordingly. Currently, Lebanon’s policies are oriented to high value-added and export-oriented agricultural and food production, which may serve to drive economic growth but tends to bypass smaller producers, exacerbate inequality, and overlook the non-economic functions of the agricultural sector including rural development and ecosystem services.
In her remarks, Jomaa looked to the recent experience of Lebanon in accommodating more than one million Syrian refugees to address the impact of migration and refugees on food insecurity. She noted that initial indications are the migration is a net benefit to the receiving community, and called for additional research to understand the impacts of migration on host countries, their economies and societies, as well as policies focused on migration that consider not only the migrant or refugee population but also the host community. Jomaa concluded with the need to streamline nutrition in the food security agenda within the debate around food policy.
The event revealed the need for a continued, robust, and evidence-based dialogue across all relevant stakeholders – including government, the private sector, academia and researchers, and NGOs and civil society – to inform and improve food policy in Lebanon and the region. For example, the need for more commercial investment in small and medium agri-food enterprises is not unique to Lebanon or MENA, but a world-wide issue sometimes dubbed “the missing middle”. Such investment needs serious research and discussion, as it is one way to help local agricultural production remain competitive in a globalized economy. Bringing stakeholders towards a common understanding of the current situation as well as of gaps in our collective knowledge is particularly important given the interdisciplinary nature of food and nutrition security, and the division of responsibility for food and nutrition security across a range of governmental actors within many countries, including Lebanon.
