Farmers’ Association ask Minister Shehayeb to resign for failing to address the agricultural crisis

The President of Lebanon’s Farmers’ Association, Antoine Howayek, warned of imminent critical danger following the drastic decline in Lebanese agricultural exports during the past five years resulting form regional turmoil, particularly after the closure of Syria’s land border crossings. Howayek strongly criticized the Ministry of Agriculture, Akram Shehayeb, for his failures, calling on the minister to step down. In an interview with An Nahar daily, Howayek lamented the government’s irresponsible approach towards the productive sector, noting the total failure of the so-termed sea bridge initiative. He said that the responsibilities of the agriculture ministry were effectively reduced to the distribution of seedlings. According to date published in the farmers’ association annual report, exports have fallen by 31% in 2015, with the decline hitting almost all the industry branches. 

For his part, the President of the Investment Development Autority of Lebanon (IDAL), Nabil Itani, indicated that the decline is not as severe as mentioned above. He explained that the causes of the plummeting exports in the middle of last month can be attributed to the fact that the sea export bridge only started to operate on September 17, which coincides with the closing of the agriculture harvest peak. “We have somewhat compensated part of the losses in agricultural exports during the first three months of shipping line operation,” Itani explained, while acknowledging that the plunge in exports reached nearly 42% in April and 38% in May. Within the same vain, the head of the Beqaa Farmers’ Association, Ibrahim Tarshishi, said that the cause for the declining exports was the fall in prices. “The sea bridge has had a positive impact in curbing the fall, but it did not fully replace the land crossings”, he added. The sea bridge cannot possibly replace access to the Iraqi capital, Baghdad, for example, or address the difficulty of entering the Jordanian markets,” Tarshishi concluded.  (An Nahar, February 27, 2016)