Introduction

Lebanon has consistently failed to design and implement agriculture policies that prioritize farmers and rural communities. Since the French mandate period, political, social, and economic dynamics have instead favored capital accumulation across the agricultural value chain – benefiting input suppliers and financial capital upstream, and prioritizing agroindustry and trade downstream. Even during the Chehab administration (1958-1964) – when the state recognized the need for wealth distribution and developed what appeared to be, at least on paper, a coherent agricultural policy – Lebanon’s ruling class was able to divert resources toward influential and well-connected farmers and landlords.¹Zeead Yaghi, “Planning National Disunity: Modernization and Development in Rural Lebanon 1958-1970”, PhD dissertation, University of California – San Diego, 2024.

Lebanon emerged from the civil war (1975-1990) as a mosaic of territories and political spaces, with varying power distributions between state and nonstate actors. In this political landscape, the state bargains and negotiates with political and economic actors, often accepting the coexistence and superposition of multiple systems of power, decision-making, and legitimacy.²Franck Debié, Danuta Pieter, and Eric Verdeil, La Paix et la Crise: le Liban Reconstruit?, Presses Universitaires de France, 2003 (Debié et al., La Paix et la Crise). This dynamic applies to agricultural policymaking, where a weak and uninterested state with limited power is ultimately instrumentalized or simply sidelined by capital, political parties, international organizations, or donors, all of whom primarily aim to advance their own agendas.

Compensating for the state’s limited capacity and willingness to design and implement nationwide policies, donors have become central actors in Lebanon’s agricultural sector, shaping its priorities and programmatic directions since the mid-1990s. Tracing donor intervention is therefore essential to understanding how agricultural development has been envisioned in Lebanon and why challenges persist.

Understanding the trajectory and limitations of the donor-Ministry of Agriculture (MoA) policy framework in Lebanon is particularly necessary in the current moment of profound economic and political transformation. Since 2019, three severe shocks that have significantly impacted agricultural input prices: The 2019 financial crisis, the 2022 war in Ukraine alongside post-COVID inflation, and the 2026 closure of the Strait of Hormuz and its consequences for energy and fertilizer costs. Compounding these economic shocks, since 2023 Lebanon has faced successive waves of Israeli military escalation culminating in the 2026 invasion of border villages in south Lebanon and Israel’s large-scale, deliberate destruction of homes and infrastructure, ethnic cleansing, and ecocide.

This study analyzes how donor-funded projects have been constrained not only by political-economy dynamics, shocks, and crises, but also by donors’ reluctance to challenge established government perspectives and advocate policies centered on farmers. It argues that donor projects have not put farmers at the center of their action and, with few exceptions, have not led to farmers’ empowerment and integration into fair food systems. Specifically, the study reviews various thematic areas of donor support, including improved competitiveness and sustainability, export-oriented development, stabilization amid the Syrian crisis, and support to the cooperatives sector. The analysis also tackles the rising interest in agroecology since 2019 and the 2025 shift in the discourse and policies of the MoA.