Berytech and the World Food Programme (WFP) have 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 roll-out or scale their impactful food system solution.
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).
Lebanon Food Security
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. The country’s food exports represent 16.5% of the value of its food import. Building the resilience, efficiency, and productivity of the agriculture and food production sector in a sustainable way is key to increasing food security in Lebanon.
With Lebanon facing one of its toughest crises, the Food System Challenge aims to support Lebanese SMEs working across the food system to sustain and improve local 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 Boujawdeh, Deputy GM of Berytech.
The Food System Challenge
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 and technical support. The package will also contain in-kind support and milestone based financial prizes from WFP.
Applicants need to submit an online concept note to present their solution to tackle the major challenges related to access to energy, access to raw material, import substitution, pricing, and skill and employee retention and development. The top 20 applicants selected through a competitive shortlisting process will move to the second phase and present their full proposals. A selection committee will evaluate the proposals and select 10 winning solutions. The 2 phases will be repeated for each of the three cycles.
“Lebanon’s fragile food system wasn’t spared by the country’s crises. The agriculture and agri-food sectors throughout the past two years witnessed a saddening deterioration that affected everyone living in Lebanon,” says Abdallah Al Wardat WFP Representative and Country Director in Lebanon. “We are committed to providing local cooperatives and small and medium enterprises (SMEs) with financial support and business development services.”
Who Can Apply
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 apply on Berytech Website.