DÉVELOPPEMENT ET MARKETING AGRICOLE AU LIBAN: LE CAS DES PROJETS DE DÉVELOPPEMENT DE LA FILIÈRE OLÉICOLE

In spite of the actual crisis of the Lebanese farming sector, agriculture remains a very important activity for Lebanon. It plays a major role to ensure the food security of the country; it occupies an important place within local and international trade; and it contributes extremely in the stabilization and the strengthening of the socioeconomic situation of the rural areas; without forgetting its impact on the natural environment of the country. In response to the problems and constraints which restrict the productivity and the efficiency of the Lebanese agriculture, and further to the years of war and destruction, and with the absence of a national agricultural policy; the international community and the Lebanese civil society engaged themselves to revitalize and develop this sector, throughout financing a big number of agricultural development projects. Based on several researches which link the concepts of agricultural marketing and value chain, to the process of agricultural and rural development, and by taking into consideration the Lebanese postwar context (the reconstruction of the country, the increase of regional disparities, and the importance of agriculture for the Lebanese society), the objective of this thesis, is to study the agricultural and rural development projects, their evolution, the stakeholders who are involved in this process, and their contribution in the elaboration and implementation of national agricultural policy. The research concerns particularly the case of the olive oil sector and its links with the different agricultural development projects. To answer the initial question of the research: what role play the agricultural development projects at the level of the agricultural value chain? And how do they contribute to the elaboration of a national agricultural policy? Observations, discussions and inquiries were undertaken in Lebanon with the stakeholders of the development system and with farmers who did or did not benefit from development projects. According to the qualitative and quantitative analysis of the data collected during the field work period, it has been proved that the agricultural development projects intervene at several levels of the agricultural value chain, with a higher integration in the upstream of the chain. On the other hand, the results of the study showed that all the projects are far from contributing to the elaboration and the implementation of a national agricultural policy, because of the lack of coordination between the different stakeholders of this system, especially regarding activities pooling, results consolidation, in addition to the weaknesses in the projects management system. These projects are implemented with a short term perspective and with the logic of sporadic aids, instead of being integrated in holistic process of long-term economic and territorial development, in coherence with a national agricultural policy. As it has already been proved by several authors and in many researches, the development projects are not a magical solution and do not constitute the only mean that leads for a sustainable agricultural and rural development. Projects do not have to replace the agricultural policy. In order to make these projects more efficient and to give them a role in the elaboration and th implementation of an agricultural policy, it is necessary to find a mechanism of coordination between all the development stakeholders and to improve the management system of the projects, by transforming them into programs of development targeting the whole value chain of the Lebanese agriculture.