The apple sector in Lebanon continues to fail to emerge from its chronic crisis. Despite the efforts led by the Ministry of Agriculture to open new trading markets and mitigate losses, a large number of orchard owners have been forced to resort to the expensive option of storage in refrigerators, in light of the blurring of the marketing landscape and the unclear horizon of opening foreign markets.
The crisis is exacerbated by the nature of the agricultural season, which is harvested in two stages according to the varieties. Farmers relied on selling the production of the first stage to provide the liquidity necessary to harvest and store the second and final stage, which is more abundant. However, the failure to distribute the crops of the first stage confused the calculations, and the farmers found themselves facing a double dilemma: the first production was accumulated and not sold, in addition to huge additional quantities waiting for space in the refrigerators.
In this context, farmer Amid Haider explained, in a statement to the “Lebanon 24” website, that storage costs constitute a huge financial burden that is paid monthly without any guarantees that future selling prices will be able to cover them. He pointed out that the long waiting period gradually leads to the erosion of profit margins, turning stored apples from capital into a heavy financial burden on its owner.
On a related level, “Lebanon 24” reported the launch of local initiatives in several mountainous regions to break the cycle of stagnation, by adopting direct sales to consumers and bypassing traditional markets and the network of intermediaries. This experiment resulted in positive results that enabled farmers to discharge significant quantities, reduce storage burdens, and achieve better financial returns than those provided by the markets.
The tangible success of these initiatives raises strategic questions that go beyond the current season, namely that if direct sales with limited local efforts succeed in saving part of the crop, what is preventing it from being transformed into an institutional, organized, and supported model that spares farmers annually from the nightmare of waiting in refrigerators? The current crisis now lies exclusively in the mechanisms of supply chains and the path of apples from the production orchard to the consumer’s table.
