Blog

By Charles Simonetti

(head of the Project Office of the John Paul II Foundation)

The year 2020 was an extraordinary year for many Lebanese small-scale farmers. Last August, in fact, the project implemented by the John Paul II Foundation thanks to funding from the Italian Agency for Development Cooperation (AICS) and aimed at the redevelopment of Lebanese cherry producers in the North Bekaa concluded. The Foundation accompanied 150 local agricultural enterprises in a reorganization process geared toward the production and marketing of a fruit that would be of high quality and at the same time competitive on the international market. The product is in fact the result of a completion of the supply chain that occurred thanks to the association of beneficiaries in four cooperatives and the dissemination of the Quality Management System (QMS), a specification to be adopted for the pre- and post-harvest stages. Before the project, producers were more reluctant to associate and follow cultivation standards that were calibrated to the local ecosystem or processing standards geared to the organized or export market. The result was often to sell a raw, size-unselected and unwrapped fruit in bulk. Export was then limited by the lack of adherence to internationally recognized traceability systems and quality certifications.

Today, Lebanese producers enjoy the sale of a product selected by grading machines according to diameter, stored in cold storage, and packaged according to a packaging whose design matches the branding created for the Fruit and Vegetables Consortium (FAV), which was created to bring cooperatives together in the product trade. The average selling price of the product has gradually risen thanks in part to the application of the QMS, which has promoted the adoption of an environmentally friendly pruning, irrigation and fertilization system that improves the quality of the fruit. A fruit that is now labeled and certified, with an increasingly higher caliber and therefore increasingly Class "A" or "B" as required by major national supermarket chains and the export market.

Already by the end of 2019, there had been an increase in the amount of product sold through cooperatives of about 175% compared to the previous season and an increase in sales prices in favor of small producers, seasonal workers, and employees hired in cooperatives. An important result: the price per kilo of exported cherries, which was 320% higher than the original price, yielded a 56% increase in profits in the hands of the farmer, generating a surplus that can be used for investment and to grow agricultural enterprises, offering a more attractive job prospect for the younger generation. A large part of the remaining 264 percent, on the other hand, goes to cover increased employment and remuneration of the seasonal labor force, both for cultivation and post-harvest stages: the introduction of warehouse processing of the fruit has led to the hiring of many women and young people from rural communities.

A concrete demonstration that agriculture that focuses on quality and environmental sustainability can be the key turning point for many small producers who are traditionally excluded from the value chain and are often forced to leave their communities.