Growing In A Minefield; the politics of organic agriculture, food security, and sustainable development in Lebanon

On a global level, debates on food security and sustainable development of food systems have shifted from merely economic debates, focusing on a trading rationale, to social debates discussing the underlying social and political relationships of food systems. Locally, the manifestation of the Lebanese political-economic system and the current crisis context have led to increased food insecurity in Lebanon. Although concepts like sustainability, resilience, and agency are centralized and recognized in international policy frameworks, Lebanese citizens are limited to act to contribute to the sustainable development of a food secure Lebanon (American University of Beirut, 2020). While acknowledgment and recognition of local knowledge and realities are needed for socially and culturally appropriate programs, it is unclear whether local Lebanese initiatives share the same interpretation or meaning of the concepts central in the policy-driven, top-down governed development programs. This research paper pays attention to food systems as socio-political systems through an ethnographic account of local agricultural initiatives that respond to food insecurity in Tripoli, Lebanon, in the context of the Lebanese crisis. The responses manifested in a particular set of social relationships structured by values of productivity, cooperation, and independence. Their future-making practices can be understood as a motion of ‘survival navigation’ within a metaphorical ‘minefield’ whereby the interwovenness of past, present, and future problematizes the exercising forces needed for the coming into being of a better future. The unpacked meaning and analysis of ‘sustainability’, ‘resilience’, and ‘agency’ shows they are experienced as part of socio-political reality, and reveals an ideological gap and a gap at the level of sustainable development practice. The Commons paradigm offers a framework of thinking to bridge this gap by acknowledging that the social world is grounded in the material world and that agency manifests in socio-political relationships around access to resources.