Current Analysis

Dispatch from South Lebanon—Life as Resistance at the End of the World

A look at land, and life, on Lebanon's frontlines.

Munira Khayyat • 10 min read

MER Article

Extractive Agribusinesses—Guaranteeing Food Security in the Gulf

The 2022 Food and Agriculture Organization report on food security and nutrition in the Arab region makes for bleak reading. Between 2014 and 2021, the total number of Arabs suffering from moderate to severe food insecurity increased from 120 million to 154 million.[1] This insecurity, however, was not distributed

Christian Henderson • 9 min read

MER Article

Settler Entanglements from Citrus Production to Historical Memory

Although settler colonies are often depicted as unique and distinctive, Muriam Haleh Davis argues that analyzing settler colonialism in a global framework reveals their multiple commonalities. Here she examines the large-scale production of citrus in Algeria, Israel and California as one fascinating

Muriam Davis • 12 min read

Current Analysis

Settler Entanglements from Citrus Production to Historical Memory

Although settler colonies are often depicted as unique and distinctive, Muriam Haleh Davis argues that analyzing settler colonialism in a global framework reveals their multiple commonalities. Here she examines the large-scale production of citrus in Algeria, Israel and California as one fascinating

Muriam Davis • 12 min read

MER Article

The Lost Wetlands of Turkey

Every year around World Wetlands Day on February 2, Turkish news outlets report that the country has lost between 1.3 and 2 million hectares of wetlands since the mid-twentieth century. Since the founding of the Turkish Republic in 1923, over 1.3 million hectares of wetlands have been drained and tr

Caterina Scaramelli • 14 min read

MER Article

Six Steps to Reform US Agricultural Policy in the Arab Region

People in the Arab region have long been hungry—for dignity, but also for food. Hunger is a social phenomenon: the “biological manifestation of underdevelopment,” in the words of Brazilian geographer Josué de Castro.[1] Underdevelopment is the reverse coin of development. Each are made by global class relations and

Max Ajl • 10 min read

Agrarian Politics and the Slow Revolution Yet to Come

Almost a decade after the 2011 uprisings, we now have an excellent synthetic text by Habib Ayeb and Ray Bush, long-time activists and researchers of (North) African agrarian questions as they relate to food sovereignty, social equality, and the ecology.

Max Ajl • 6 min read

Sudan's Economic Nightmare

Ten years ago, Sudan was described in a Food and Agriculture Organization report as a potential “breadbasket of the world.” Hopes for the development of Sudan’s economy were running high at the time: the investment of Arab oil-generated revenues in Sudan's agricultural sector seemed to hold immense

Tim Niblock • 12 min read

MER Article

Starvation, Submission and Survival

On December 23, 2012, following a week of imposed scarcity, the Syrian town of Halfaya received 100 sacks of flour from an Islamic charity. The town’s main bakery started churning out bread, an all too infrequent occurrence since violence between the Asad regime and opposition forces escalated earli

Brent Eng, Jose Ciro Martinez • 14 min read

MER Article

Small Farmer Uprisings and Rural Neglect in Egypt and Tunisia

“We should make it up to the peasants,” Muhsin al-Batran, erstwhile head of the economic affairs unit in Egypt’s Ministry of Agriculture, told the official daily al-Ahram two months after the toppling of Husni Mubarak in 2011. “Make it up” -- why? And what is it that needs to be made up?

Habib Ayeb, Ray Bush • 14 min read

MER Article

From the Editors (Fall 2014)

In the last week of August, after several false starts, a ceasefire finally halted the summertime slaughter in Gaza. Israel’s bombs stopped falling, Palestinians stopped dying and the world media stopped its round-the-clock coverage. And, just like that, Gaza was again yesterday’s news.

The Editors • 4 min read

MER Article

Livelihoods Up in Smoke

On the streets of Turkish cities, the cigarette packs being traded and tucked into shirt pockets are adorned with the familiar brand names of Philip Morris and British American Tobacco. The ubiquity of foreign brands is remarkable, for Turkey is the world’s leading producer of Oriental tobacco—the s

Ebru Kayaalp • 11 min read