صراط عشق صراط عشق
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.
In a remote village in southern Lebanon, Qassem Shreim crouched low to examine his wheat crop.
Like many families in 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.
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.
