Middle East News: Back to the land: Lebanese family turns to farming to survive crises – Gulf Digital News

Middle East News: Back to the land: Lebanese family turns to farming to survive crises – Gulf Digital News

In a remote village in southern Lebanon, Qassem Shreim crouched low to examine his wheat crop. Food costs have soared amid a global wheat crisis and Lebanon's own economic meltdown, but the builder-turned-farmer feels shielded by his self-sufficiency.

Like many families in crisis-plagued Lebanon, Shreim turned to farming after the local pound began to slip in 2019, making his construction work scarce and his grocery runs ever more costly.

"We couldn't work, so what did we do? We turned to agriculture," the 42-year-old told Reuters in his home village of Houla, near the border with Israel.

Food prices have jumped 11-fold since Lebanon's crisis began, the World Food Programme says.

Lebanese authorities have incrementally increased an official price cap on loaves of the staple pita bread and fears of a wheat shortage have grown since Russia's invasion of Ukraine derailed grain shipments.

That crisis feels worlds away in Shreim's humble home, where slices of melon picked from their garden glisten in the afternoon sun and the kitchen is stocked with flatbread baked by his wife, Khadija, using wheat from their land.

Their front patio and hallway have been turned into a makeshift shop, where wooden stalls made by Khadija bear fat watermelons and jars of freshly-pressed