Agriculture Promotion Strategy 2010 - 2014.

This Agriculture Promotion Strategy is a nationwide sectoral document aiming at carrying out a radical evaluation of the components of the agricultural sector in order to proceed to its development, in addition to providing the appropriate institutional framework and focusing on the quality of growth and development issues that benefit people and their living conditions. The concept of agricultural sector development is based on the following dimensions: (i) economic, to provide agricultural products that meet an adequate part of the internal demand and have a competitive capacity; (ii) environmental, through an increased attention to natural resources, their preservation, rational use, pollution control, and the focus on developing healthy agriculture that takes into account the environmental balance and the health aspects of the human being; (iii) social, promoting an agricultural sector and rural development that contributes to achieving a balanced development between regions, combating poverty and malnutrition, providing the concept of food security in terms of quantity, quality and prices, reducing rural exodus, and enhancing the role of women and youth in rural development. The main objectives of the Strategy are as follows (i) update the issuance of the necessary legislation; (ii) develop the structure and the role of the Ministry of Agriculture and coordinate it with the public, private and national sectors; (iii) modernize agricultural infrastructure and raise the efficiency of using natural resources; (iv) activate the agricultural extension; (v) activate control over agricultural products and inputs, forests, and marine fishery, and hunting; (vi) develop production chains, improving its quality, and activate manufacturing, marketing, and export; (vii) establish programs and credit mechanisms for medium and small projects; and (viii) preserve natural resources, such as soil, forests, biological diversity, regulate marginal land use, pastures, and fisheries.
To make agriculture and forestry more productive and sustainable, the Strategy aims to (i) raise the efficiency of utilizing water resources (water harvesting, rationalizing the use of irrigation water, reducing water pollution); (ii) expand land reclamation in order to increase the agricultural area; (iii) develop an integrated agricultural extension plan; (iv) rehabilitate and activate veterinary and botanical quarantine centers at the border points; (v) promote sustainable management of marginal lands and rangelands; and (vi) develop and implement a National Forest Management Plan.
To reduce rural poverty, the document mentions the development of the agricultural road network.
In order to enhance more inclusive and efficient agricultural and food systems, the interventions will aim to (i) monitoring the safety of agricultural products in the Lebanese market; (ii) encouraging and assisting producers and farmers to adhere to the specifications and standards imposed by the internal and external markets; (iii) encourage and assist producers and farmers in adopting traceability and labeling systems; (iv) move to more specialized means of production at the level of the internal market, manufacturing or export; (v) raise production efficiency in order to increase competitiveness and give added value to products; (vi) activating and developing an agricultural export support program; (vii) providing simplified and subsidized sources of financing for investment in the agricultural sector in order to enable small and medium-sized owners to obtain agricultural loans; (viii) establishing new agricultural credit mechanisms across the banking sector; (ix) linking agricultural loans to the adoption of standards, specifications, tracking systems, and commercial agricultural labels; and (x) reconsider the traditional Lebanese products.
To increase the resilience of livelihoods to disasters, the Strategy suggests envisages (i) a reduction of soil pollution and desertification; and (ii) the preservation of biological diversity and ecosystem.
As for Governance, main interventions will be directed to (i) update the structure, tasks, and coordination processes within the Ministry of Agriculture (General Directorate of Agriculture, Agricultural Scientific Research Service, Green Project, General Directorate of Cooperatives); (ii) organize and activate the cooperation with governmental and non-governmental bodies and regional and international organizations; and (iii) rehabilitate and activate control devices and mechanisms and laboratory development.