Besides adding to global pressure towards sustainability, Lebanon spearheaded the farm-to-table revolution by flipping culinary culture on its head in an effort to connect the levels. Besides changing consumption culture, the revolution flipped food production, consumption, and society on their heads.
Farm-to-table is buying fresh vegetables and fruits directly from the producers and farmers. Farm-to-table was the rage in Lebanon for restaurant chefs, home preparers, and consumers who were dedicated to flavor, freshness, and fewer environmental disasters. Unlike locally produced products, the trend favours greater immediacy of contact between consumers and farmers that maintains social solidarity as well as responsibility to nature.
Lebanon’s hillside and country villages, with their Mediterranean climate, are lovely ground in which to set fruits, vegetables, and herbs. Fresh produce ripens crops—blossoming tomatoes ripened on the vine to fragrant mint—are overflowing from souks and town squares and from organic oil bazaars, stock house cheese, and farm-fresh foods. They are the pillars of Lebanese cuisine traditional and modern.
This rebirth of food here is also an ethical re-mapping of human eating. Lebanese eaters and producers alike are increasingly embracing organic modes of production, hanging onto diversity and harvesting the world in ecologically friendly manners. Openness of food and fair sourcing spilled over into greater tolerance for producers working on small-scale, sustainable levels of production.
Lebanese chefs have embellished well-documented national dishes such as Tabouleh, kibbeh, and lentil soup with crisp seasonal fruits and vegetables grown locally. So that they can maintain cultural identity in its literal term but certainly incorporate new locally grown fruits and vegetables in order to cultivate innovations. It is the gastronomic pleasure of Lebanon’s agro-heritage and a show that tradition and sustainability could be tastefully mixed in the kitchen.
Restaurants everywhere in the world also hopped aboard the bandwagon of sustainability in ways other than supply. Waste reduction, composting, and green staff practice training in-house are all de facto standard operating procedures now, so even more attention to the environment. Even customers consider what they buy and its environmental effect and hope for businesses that do have some sustainability practices.
Synergizing Lebanese everyday life with farm-to-table culture is an empowering environmental and cultural revolution. Synthesizing organic farming and traditional preparation, Lebanon is leading the way to a healthier greener more sustainable food system. Besides conserving culinary traditions, the phenomenon also initiates a worldwide movement toward sustainable food future.
