Increasing Resilience to Climate Change in the Agricultural Sector of the Middle East by Dorte Verner; David R. Lee; Maximillian Ashwill; Robert Wilby

Author:Dorte Verner; David R. Lee; Maximillian Ashwill; Robert Wilby
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: The World Bank

Source: Ministry of Agriculture (Lebanon) and FAO 2000 (Agricultural Census 1998).

The Bekaa Valley, one of the two focus regions of this report, forms an extension of the Jordan Rift Valley, and is located about 30 kilometers (19 miles) east of Beirut, the capital of Lebanon (see map 3.1). The Bekaa Valley is about 120 kilometers (about 75 miles) in length and has an average width of about 16 kilometers (about 10 miles). It is flanked by two mountain ranges: Mount Lebanon to the west and the Anti-Lebanon mountain range to the east. These mountain ranges feed two major rivers in the Bekaa Valley: the Orontes, which flows northeast to the Syrian border, and the Litani, which flows southwest before emptying into the Mediterranean in southern Lebanon.

Agriculture in the Bekaa Valley is severely constrained by the physical nature of the land. The mountain ranges lying to the east and the west, high population density, traditional land tenure patterns, and rapidly increasing urbanization are jointly responsible for landholdings varying between 2 and 5 hectares (Hamadeh et al. 1999), with an average at the time of the last Agricultural Census (1998) of 2.9 hectares (Ministry of Environment (Lebanon)/LEDO/ECODIT 2001). This, however, is significantly larger than the average landholdings in Lebanon; at the time of the 1998 Agricultural Census, 75 percent of Lebanon’s farmers were estimated to be cultivating less than 1 hectare; 87 percent of farmers cultivated less than two hectares (FAO 2009).

The geographic regions of the Bekaa Valley can be classified according to precipitation: Northern Bekaa is arid with 250–275 millimeters a year; Central Bekaa (the Central Valley) is semi-arid with 500–600 millimeters a year; and Southern Bekaa is non-arid with 700–750 millimeters a year (Amery 2002). The peak of the rainy season is between January and April, where 75 percent of rainfall occurs. Average temperatures in the Bekaa Valley range from 9°C in the winter to 27°C in the summer.

The soils, which include Alfisols, Inceptisols and Aridisols, are rich in calcium carbonates (5–30 percent) with appreciable amounts of available potassium. Active lime varies between 20 and 30 percent and the pH is generally high, between 8 and 9, which reduces the availability of metal macronutrients. Phosphorus is also deficient except in fields routinely fertilized with the element, in which case a strong residual supply is found. The amounts of organic matter and of nitrogen are generally low (1 percent at depth less than 0.5 meter) and nitrogen deficiency is common. Soil depth is highly variable, affecting moisture storage capacity and causing variable maturity dates in areas of similar rainfall (Hamadeh et al. 1999).

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