Farming, like other productive sectors, has the potential to thrive as the devaluation of the lira has made local crops more competitive abroad and food imports more expensive creating opportunities both on the domestic and global markets. A number of crops enjoy promising export prospects. Organic farming is the top winner as it does not use very expensive imported inputs such as pesticides and synthetic fertilizers. Agricultural exports are already rising sharply. They increased 34 percent yearon- year in the first nine months of 2020. More people have recently entered the agricultural sector, which has indirectly contributed to the increase.
Untapped export potential
The country’s untapped potential is estimated at $900 million of agricultural exports. Almost half of this amount consists of fruit and vegetable output and nearly a quarter of it is made up of food products (prepared or preserved), according to the Ministry of Agriculture (MoA). “This untapped potential could be exploited thanks to a number of already existing trade agreements (e.g. GAFTA, EMAA, EFTA) and will be boosted by the depreciation of the lira, provided that adequate quality assurance and logistics systems will be in place,” the MoA said in its ‘Lebanon National Agriculture Strategy (NAS) 2020-2025’. Agricultural products, mainly fruits and vegetables, raw tobacco, spices and live sheep, and agribusiness products (mostly processed and semiprocessed food), represent more than 20 percent of total national exports.
Promising crops
Farmers can focus on a number of crops that have export potential that include apples, cherries, citrus
