03 April 2013
CHOUF, Lebanon: Field hand Umm Mohammad compares the ripe strawberry, now in season across the country, to an enchanting woman. It has a beautiful color, a great taste and an attractive shape, she says.
Umm Mohammad, a Syrian refugee, used to plant the fruit in her hometown before fleeing to Lebanon.
She and thousands of others field hands, agricultural engineers, street vendors, juice shops and patisseries are in the thick of local strawberry season, helping bring the bright red fruits to plates and mouths all over the country. The industry is fast at work before summer barges in and chokes the strawberry fields with too much heat.
We race against time because the hot weather harms the fruits, Umm Mohammad says. We have to gather and sell them before it gets too hot.
The beach resort-lined village of Jiyyeh is famous for its strawberry cultivation. There and in neighboring Rmeileh and Damour, hundreds of foreign agricultural workers tend the fields. Picking strawberries alongside Syrians, Sudanese and Kurdish workers, Fatima, a Turkish Kurd, has come with her family to work on the fields in Jiyyeh.
I love to work during this season because the strawberry fruit is beautiful, she says.
Planting of the strawberry seedlings begins in October, and they grow for about four months until mid-March, when they are ready to be harvested, says farmer Mohammad Kasseb.
In Jiyyeh, farmers import the strawberry seedlings from France and Australia. The seedlings cost around LL1,000 each, which farmers immediately sterilize, spray with pesticides and wrap in nylon for protection.
After the planting, the seedlings are left for a month, Kasseb says.
After about 50 days they start to yield fruits, he says.
One seedling gives about 1 kilogram of good strawberries each season and each dunam of land contains about 12,000 saplings. The final yield from a single dunam is about 12 metric tons of strawberries, the biggest of which can weigh as much as 60 grams.
But Lebanons strawberry industry isnt all sweet.
Every day refrigerated trucks arrive in the market in Sidon from Syria to compete with the Lebanese product. The raging civil war in neighboring Syria has driven down their produce prices, Kasseb and other farmers say.
Competition with cheap Syrian strawberries has harmed business for Lebanese growers, he laments.
As if the costs of the cultivation, workers wages and the pesticides are not enough, now we have the competition of the strawberries imported from Syria, says farmer Mark al-Qazzi.
Lebanon also imports thousands of tons of strawberries from Egypt, but these are mainly used at juice factories, and local growers seem less concerned about them.
In addition to juice manufacturers, ice cream makers, jam producers, restaurants and patisseries use the fruits fresh and frozen all year long, Qazzi says. He calls on the central government to aid the local industry by banning strawberry imports at least during Lebanons high season.
Another industry member, Mustapha al-Hajj agrees.
The relevant authorities should prevent importing Syrian strawberries into our market especially when we have a high season because our products are superior, he says.
Consumers are unable to distinguish between local and imported strawberries, ruining the reputation of the local product by selling unimpressive fruit, Hajj says.
Mass cultivation of strawberries in Lebanon began in earnest only 20 years ago, says agricultural engineer Salim Maloush. Before that it was rare and only members of the elite classes bought them for exorbitant prices, he says.
The vast majority of farmers plant seedlings imported from France, but Lebanon has begun producing its own saplings in the Laqlouq area in mountainous Jbeil.
We are now using modern agricultural tools, Maloush says. In the past we were carrying water, and now were using pumps and growing in greenhouses, like vegetables.
Maloush also dispels any myths about hormone and pesticide use. Pesticides used on strawberries are certified safe by both national organizations and the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization. The pesticides mainly protect against molds that commonly grow on strawberries.
And the hormones are derived from plants, he says.
Once out of the hands of the field workers, the strawberries are sorted and shipped off for various uses.
Ali, a Lebanese agricultural worker, packages and sorts the fruits by size. The bigger fruits are sold to restaurants, patisseries and juice stands for around LL2,500 a kilogram, he says.
They sell smaller, unripe strawberries by the ton for around LL1,500 per kilogram. These go mainly to mass producers of jam and juice.
Strawberries are a coveted fruit, Ali says Even the birds are attracted by the fruits. They sneak into the greenhouses to eat them.
Small-scale street vendors line the highway between Beirut and Sidon, selling fresh strawberries in carefully measured plastic bags.
Anjad, one of these vendors, says the strawberries this season are particularly good, but he needs to sell them fast before they shrivel in the sun.
I have to sell my strawberries before noon otherwise theyll be ruined, he says. Anjad starts the day selling a kilogram for LL3,000, and as the day winds down reduces his prices to LL1,000.
Snack shops are also taking advantage of the local strawberry season.
Abu Walid, the owner of a juice and ice cream shop, says he buys huge amounts of fresh Lebanese strawberries to sell in juice smoothies.
We also make ice cream from fresh strawberries after we add milk, sugar and water, he says. Every 5 kilograms of strawberries gives us 7 kilograms of fresh ice cream.
When the season is over, Abu Walid returns to using frozen strawberries from Lebanon and Egypt.
Still, the best use of strawberries happens right at home, says Nawal Asmar, a housewife in the southern village of Salhieh.
Asmar shuns manufactured jams for their artificial colors and chooses instead to make her own jam from fresh strawberries at the end of the local season.
I make all kinds of homemade jams, especially strawberry, she says. I wait all season for the price to drop to buy big quantities.
Strawberry Jam
3 Makes 400 ml
Ingredients:
- 1 kg ripe strawberries
- 8 kg jam sugar (contains artificial pectin)
- Juice of 1 lemon
Preparation:
Put a pot in the freezer.
Cut away the stem and white of each strawberry and mash to a pulp.
Bring pulp to a boil in a pan with jam sugar and lemon juice. Boil for around 13 minutes, stirring constantly.
In the last three minutes check if the jam has set by using the frozen pot. Place a spoon of jam in the pot and put back in the freezer for one minute. Poke the jam after the minutes up to see if it wrinkles if so, its set.
Remove pink gunk from the surface; pour jam into sterilized jars and store.
Strawberry and almond sweet bread
Like banana bread, cakey strawberry bread offers a great way to use up strawberries that are past their prime. Other nuts can be substituted for almonds, like walnuts or pecans, and many of the ingredients are things already sitting in the kitchen like laban (whole fat or fat free) and honey. The batter is baked in a bread loaf tin (23x13x8 cm) allowing for a thick moist center and a crusty delicious top.
3 Serves 8-10
Ingredients:
- 1/2 cup unsalted butter
- 3/4 cup sugar
- 3 large eggs
- 1 tsp vanilla
- 2 cups plain flour
- 1/2 tsp baking powder
- 1/2 tsp baking soda
- 1/4 tsp salt
- 1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
- 1/2 tsp allspice
- 1/2 cup laban
- 1/2 cup almonds, chopped
- 15 ml honey
- 250 g basket of fresh strawberries, roughly chopped
Preparation:
Preheat oven to 180 degrees Celsius and grease loaf tin.
Drizzle almonds with honey and mix to coat, spread out on a baking sheet and back for about 8 minutes. Set aside.
In a bowl, mix together flour, baking soda, salt and spices.
In a separate bowl, cream butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Add vanilla extract and beat each egg in one at a time.
Do not over beat during this process: Gently fold in half of the flour mixture and then half of the laban. Then fold in the rest of the flour and then the rest of the laban.
Fold in nuts and strawberries.
Pour into loaf tin and bake for about 50-60 minutes until golden brown on top.
Copyright The Daily Star 2013.
