Since the beginning of this summer, the cry of Lebanese farmers has been rising, as the challenges they face are many, starting with securing seeds and fertilizer for agriculture, passing by securing electricity for irrigation, and even cooling vegetables and fruits, waiting to find a solution to the export problem.
In a related context, sources in the Lebanese Ministry of Agriculture revealed to Sky News Arabia about the government’s interference in the processing line, whether by purchasing a quantity of production or assisting in exporting, but the obstacles are still large and have left bad effects on vegetables and fruits, especially apples and grapes.
pleas
Since the beginning of the crisis, fruit and vegetable farmers in Lebanon have raised their voice with each season. Appeals and sit-ins and throwing crops, to save them from successive losses.
Movements that did not bear fruit as the scene recurs with the apple season without it having a sale in the Arab markets, and the difficulty of discharging the production was made more difficult by the discoveries from time to time of attempts to smuggle drugs in fruits and vegetables prepared for external export.
More losses
Abu Ali – a farmer in Bekai (eastern Lebanon) says: “The disaster this year is very big, as a result of the collapse of the Lebanese currency, the farmer was forced to buy fertilizers and insecticide medicines at the most expensive prices.”
– The wages of the worker and the wages of transport increased after the increase in the prices of diesel and gasoline, and the production remained undisbursed.
Abu Ali explains to Sky News Arabia, saying, “The local market is unable to absorb production because most of the vegetables and fruits we produce are intended for export to the markets of Arab countries, and exports are currently suspended for political reasons.”
The head of the Bekaa Farmers’ Association in Lebanon, Ibrahim Tarshichi, describes the situation as sad and says in an interview with Sky News Arabia:
– “The situation worsened for many reasons, most notably: the increase in the cost of production by 3 times more than it was last summer.”
– The increase in the price of a diesel fuel tank to 23 dollars, after it was 12 dollars last year.
– “The rise in the cost of fuel increases the cost of production, which was not more than 8 percent, and it has reached more than 50 percent this year, while half of the production cost goes to cover the price of fuels.”
The production of Lebanese apples this year was abundant, while 50 percent of the cold places designated for preserving grapes and potatoes are closed, and the remaining percentage reached the cost of cooling one kilo in them to 3 dollars, not to mention the rent of transport and workers, which led to the stagnation of the apple season and selling it in the local market at low prices. .
– Stopping exports, especially to Iraq and Egypt.
– The purchasing power in Lebanon has declined and is equal to 1/20 of what it was before.
– The solution is to reduce production prices and sell at a loss, and the farmer cannot bear this, and preferred to leave the agricultural sector to other sectors.
Trichy concluded his speech to Sky News Arabia, stressing that “50 percent of farmers who are still working in the agricultural sector are now investing half of the agricultural land originally allocated for cultivation in normal years, and this means the use of only a quarter of agricultural land, and this decline is very dangerous to food security.”
smuggling
“In addition to the high cooling cost, there are problems in exporting crops, especially apples, to Egypt,” the engineer and agricultural and environmental expert Khair Al-Jarrah told Sky News Arabia.
– The growing smuggling lines from Syria to Lebanon, and the quantities of vegetables that enter through them are very large and uncontrolled as well.
– If refrigerated trucks are allowed to cross through Syrian territory, refrigerated trucks pay between 600 and 1000 dollars per truck, and this is a very high cost, so a large part of exporters resorted to exporting via ships, and this is also expensive.”
Jarrah concluded his speech to Sky News Arabia, saying, “We learned on Thursday that Jordan prevented the passage of Lebanese and Syrian refrigerated trucks through its territory.”
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