Presentation short abstract

This paper examines the rise of food sovereignty movements amidst overlapping crises in Lebanon. By reviving traditional knowledges, and experimenting with solidarity-based economies, these initiatives open possibilities for reimagining food systems beyond neoliberal or sectarian logics.

Presentation long abstract

Lebanon’s agricultural lands are caught in overlapping crises: economic collapse, climate change, war, and the breakdown of state institutions. Historically sidelined by public policies in favor of more lucrative sectors, agriculture has long been deprived of structural support. In recent years, successive crises have deepened this structural collapse and exposed the fragility of the conventional food system, dependent on export-oriented monocultures, massive imports, agrochemical inputs, and intermediary monopolies, further exacerbating the precarity of small producers.

Yet within this fragmented landscape, agroecological initiatives are emerging as counter-hegemonic practices and infrastructures of survival. These grassroots mobilizations, spanning different stages of the food system, articulate visions of food sovereignty that resist both state failure and dependency on globalized markets. This paper offers a critical mapping of initiatives contributing to the development of a solidarity economy in Lebanon in times of crisis. From ecological farming cooperatives to seed-saving networks, from solidarity stores to producer markets, together, they form a fragile yet vibrant ecology of resistance, repair, and regeneration within Lebanon’s agrarian landscape.

The research places these struggles within Lebanon’s political ecology, attentive to the ways in which regimes materialize through soil, water, and infrastructure. It interrogates how local initiatives, in the absence of state reform, enact autonomy and resistance while navigating geopolitical pressures, including Israeli colonial violence and regional dependencies. Ultimately, this paper asks: how can agrarian struggles in Lebanon inspire a radical rethinking of markets, production chains, and governance ? How can food sovereignty be mobilized as a political project of emancipation ?