The Food System Challenge: Increasing Resilience of the Lebanese Food System
Sep 13 2021
Berytech has launched The Food System Challenge to improve food security and increase resilience in the food system in Lebanon through business support, technical assistance, in-kind grants, and support packages to SMEs to enable their ideas and boost their growth.
The Food Systems challenge is implemented by the World Food Programme (WFP) and Berytech through support from the German Federal Ministry of Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ).
Food security and all its pillars: accessibility, utilization, stability, and availability for everyone are strongly linked to local food production in Lebanon. However, Lebanon depends on imports to meet the national consumption needs where the country’s food exports represent 16.5% of the value of its imports in food. Hence, empowering, modernizing, and building the resilience of the agriculture and food production sector is key to increase food security in Lebanon.
With Lebanon facing one of its toughest crises, the Food System Challenge aims to support Lebanese SMEs working across the agri-food value chain to sustain and improve local food production, transformation, and consumption.
“The consecutive crises inflicting the country had various impacts on the income and operations of enterprises of all sizes while also forcing them to cope with the reduction of financial resources, the diminishing energy sources, the brain drain, and some chose to freeze operations until further notice. Yet, enterprises operating in the agriculture and agri-food sectors are vital not just to the economy but also to the food security of the country and livelihoods of the rural communities,” explains Ramy Boujawde, Deputy GM of Berytech.
The project covers 3 cycles where 10 SMEs will be selected in each to undergo a transformational journey, thus targeting a total of 30 Lebanese SMEs working in the food system.
Berytech will be providing selected SMEs with a transformational journey package including tailored business development services, technical and financial support, and milestone based financial prizes.
Applicants need to submit an online concept note to present and describe the challenges and opportunities their solution will tackle. The top 20 applicants that rank the highest in a competitive shortlisting process will move to the second phase and present their full proposals. A steering committee will evaluate the proposals from which 10 beneficiaries will be selected. The 2 phases will be repeated for each of the three cycles.
SMEs with a solid project addressing the mentioned food system challenges and operating within the following food system streams: production, transformation, marketing, and consumption, such as input suppliers, registered farmer organizations, agri-food cooperatives, storage centers, processors, distributors.
Interested applicants can find more information and
Berytech has launched The Food System Challenge to support SMEs and cooperatives in addressing some of the most urgent challenges facing the Lebanese food system and hindering food security and resilience.
30 Lebanese SMEs and cooperatives working in the food system
BMZ through the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP)
