Reaching New Markets Through Food Safety and Quality Improvements in Lebanon

REACHING NEW MARKETS THROUGH FOOD SAFETY AND QUALITY IMPROVEMENTS IN LEBANON A mid-term results summary of the Lebanon Farmer-To-Farmer Food Safety and Quality (F2F FSQ) 11.21 | PREPARED BY LAND O’LAKES VENTURE 37

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WHY FOOD SAFETY & QUALITY? Venture37 believes that empowering agricultural producers and processors to follow best practices in Food Safety and Quality (FSQ) is a key component to overcoming barriers to market access.

Venture37 takes this approach under the USAID-funded Farmer-toFarmer Food Safety & Quality project in Lebanon (September 2018 to September 2023), a country in which FSQ has been elevated to the national agenda.

Given the current economic state of Lebanon, securing an influx of foreign currency is essential for the stability and recovery of local businesses and the nation’s economy as a whole. Complying with food safety requirements is an essential step to reaching these markets. F2F FSQ supports small and medium-sized partner agribusinesses by helping them to improve their overall food safety to build the trust of domestic and export retailers and expand their markets.

MID-TERM PROJECT IMPACT This report showcases the project’s unique approach and demonstrates midterm success amidst economic and social challenges in Lebanon as well as obstacles related to the global COVID-19 pandemic.

The success of the volunteer assignments and dedication of F2F FSQ partners is demonstrated by the $60,284 in aggregate that our partners have invested in infrastructure improvements, despite the pandemic, the economic crisis, and political instability.

The project’s success thus far is due in part to the careful selection of partner agribusinesses with which to engage. The team works closely with retailers and exporters to identify small to medium agroprocessors in their supply chains who have a willingness to improve their food safety systems and a desire to reach new markets. Using carefully designed and tested selection criteria, partner agribusinesses co-created food safety acceleration plans which include a detailed outline of the pipeline of assignments to address gaps and achieve business goals, which are executed by volunteer experts. Seven partners have co-created acceleration plans to date, and 14 volunteer experts have traveled to Lebanon to provide incountry face-to-face support. In addition to in-person U.S. volunteer assignments, due to COVID-19 travel restrictions, the project paired 13 remote U.S. volunteers with local volunteers who visited the partners face-to-face, in addition to facilitating two fully remote U.S. volunteer assignments.

The success of the volunteer assignments and dedication of F2F FSQ 2

partners is demonstrated by the $60,284 in aggregate that our partners have invested in infrastructure improvements, despite the pandemic, the economic crisis, and political instability. These infrastructure improvements, coupled with the adoption of improved food safety practices and hiring quality assurance focused staff, have enabled our partners to reach new international and local markets, increase sales, enhance food safety, and improve resiliency.

This mid-term impact report organizes project success into three broad categories: self-reliance and resilience to emergencies like COVID-19, expanded market access and increased sales, and safer food for consumers.

THE FARMER-TO-FARMER FOOD SAFETY AND QUALITY APPROACH Venture37’s focused F2F FSQ project approach draws on two distinctive features. First, Venure37 co-implements the Lebanon project with Land O’Lakes, Inc., a $15 billion global agribusiness and food company with industry-leading operations that spans the spectrum from agricultural food production to consumer foods. The Land O’Lakes, Inc. Quality Assurance team is made up of food safety experts with oversight of all Land O’Lakes brands, factories, and commercial partners around the world. This team equips F2F FSQ with leading industry practices, tools, and a network of international food safety experts. Over 40 percent of all FSQ technical assistance have been mobilized pro-bono from various Land O’Lakes, Inc.’s business units. Other expert volunteers are sourced from Land O’Lakes, Inc.’s network United States.

Using the GMaP framework, the path from zero compliance to full accreditation against internationally accepted food safety program is broken into achievable, actionable phases, mentored by the volunteer experts.

A second distinctive feature is our use of the Global Food Safety Initiative’s Global Markets Programme as the framework to assess processor facilities and practices, identify non-conformities to international standards, and align our targeted technical assistance with GFSI bench-marked food safety certifications. GFSI certification projects are recognized by some of the world’s leading brands.

Sustainability is woven throughout the program. F2F FSQ is designed to be self-led, self-taught, and accessible. Using the GMaP framework, the path from zero compliance to full accreditation against internationally accepted food safety program is broken into achievable, actionable phases. This allows the businesses to make stepwise investments into their business on their own schedule.

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“Thanks to Venture 37 experts and the team for their help we can officially say now that we entered the international markets.”

- Mr. Paul Akl, Beneficiary, Food Processing Sector

At the conclusion of our engagement with each processor, we conduct an end-line assessment to gauge the processor’s improvement. While the project does not facilitate certification, it assesses certification readiness and ensures that the processor doesn’t waste resources on premature attempts toward certification. Field staff and pro-bono experts coach and mentor host processors through the first few steps and ensure that they have the tools needed to become self-reliant as they continue their journey to improved FSQ once they have graduated out of the need for the project’s technical expertise.

EXPANDED MARKET ACCESS + INCREASED SALES To date, five partner agribusinesses have increased their sales by an average of 12 percent as a result of F2F FSQ project support. Project assistance and volunteer recommendations led partners to introduce new products and find ways to reduce production costs, resulting in increased gross revenues. Additionally, volunteers have helped partners reach new markets by assisting to revamp and update product.

AIN EL AKL – APPLE PROCESSING – AKOURA NORTH LEBANON Ain El Akl is a family business from Akoura, a village in Mount Lebanon that is famous for its apple production. Several years ago, the small family company began sorting its production at harvest. It sold Grade A apples locally and processed the other grades into juice, jams, chips, crackers, and other types of apple by-products. In their aspirations to expand, the company sought to improve their food safety to reach export markets.

Ain el Akl, three generations of farming

F2F FSQ Lebanon supported Ain El Akl in improving their product packaging and labeling to comply with international requirements by mobilizing volunteer experts in these fields.

A Land O’Lakes, Inc. Senior Brand Design Manager helped create a professional image for the company comprised of a new label and packaging design that fits end market requirements. The program also recruited a food safety and labeling expert who complemented the new labels by improving the product’s safety and nutrition facts, as well as its representation on product labels, adhering to international standards. As a result of this assistance, the Ain El Akl is now compliant with African market requirements and has gained an important new international customer as well as a domestic one. The domestic customer sells throughout the large mall system in Mount Lebanon and provides a great opportunity for increased visibility for Ain El Akl. In September of 2020, it sent its first shipment of 600 bottles of apple juice to Côte d’Ivoire with future shipments to other areas in Africa, and Canada anticipated. With new buyers, Ain El Akl has increased its apple juice sales by 33% from the previous year.

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THE GOOD THYMES – SPICE MIXES – JEZZINE SOUTH LEBANON F2F FSQ collaborated with the Venture37-implemented USAID Lebanon Investment in Quality (LINQ) program to support The Good Thymes, a small food processor from South Lebanon specializing in the production of Za’atar, a popular spice blend from the Middle East. F2F FSQ assisted The Good Thymes in understanding their food safety gaps by recruiting two volunteer experts. One of the volunteers is a senior quality manager from Land O’Lakes, Inc. who trained The Good Thymes staff on the GMaP requirements.

Evie Severyn’s visit to the Good Thymes

Their assistance was accompanied by an expert in FDA requirements who worked with the partner’s team on upgrading nutrition facts and product labels to meet the international market requirements. Since partnering with the two volunteers, with the support provided by the LINQ program, The Good Thymes has begun exporting its products to the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabi, and the United States, in addition to increasing its domestic market sales by selling through online platforms.

SELF-RELIANCE AND RESILIENCY Lebanon’s economic situation, exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic, has exerted a significant stress on agribusinesses. The F2F FSQ program has been assisting partner businesses to increase resilience and self-reliance to overcome these current crises and adapt to future shocks.

Two partners have created four FSQrelated jobs to continue advancing FSQ improvements and ensure sustainability.

To help our partner agribusinesses become more self-reliant, the program encourages them to take ownership of their own FSQ journey. With the help of GFSI’s GMaP assessment tool, the F2F project personnel help partners identify nonconformities to international standards. F2F FSQ then brings in volunteer experts to help address the nonconformities by leveraging the partners’ abilities and co-creating action plans for improving food safety. Action plans can include infrastructure investments and employing specific FSQ personnel, when possible, but also low- or no-cost updates that can produce significant improvements to food safety. The F2F FSQ team and subsequent volunteer experts guide the partners through completion of the action plans. After implementing customized action plans, two food processors have made important infrastructure renovations to their facilities, putting them in line with international food safety requirements. Improvements include installing separation walls and doors between the production and packaging areas to ensure a clean production zone, fixing windows mesh and wall openings, and installing pest control traps.

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Partner agribusinesses understand that they must invest in dedicated FSQ personnel to improve and maintain FSQ standards. Since the program’s inception, two partners have created four FSQ-related jobs to continue advancing FSQ improvements and ensure sustainability.

These professionals will help manage food safety related issues and will be the FSQ leaders, driving the achievement of their business’ FSQ goals past project support.

Encouraging our partners to take steps toward improving their resiliency to external shocks also improves their self-reliance. We encourage our partners to shorten their supply chains and source materials locally, when possible, to minimize impacts of disturbances to foreign currency reserves and disruptions to imports. One partner producing ice cream began sourcing its raw materials like maltodextrin and stabilizers/emulsifiers from the local supplier instead of importing it and is now producing its product at a lower cost. They have not only strengthened their supply chain resiliency but have retained more money within Lebanon in a time of deep economic depression. Four partners have begun exporting to international markets and are thus increasing market systems resilience by diversifying the portfolio of consumers and bringing in foreign currency at the same time that banks enacted freezes on foreign assets.

TAYYEBAT – FROZEN FRENCH FRIES – SOUTH LEBANON Tayyebat, a frozen French fries manufacturer located in South Lebanon, is adapting to the hardships of the global COVID-19 pandemic and Lebanon’s current economic crisis and even has plans to grow. With support from the F2F FSQ team and volunteer experts, Tayyebat has recently been able to forge new opportunities in international markets. Their success comes after an investment of $32,000 to upgrade food safety systems to become compliant with internationally recognized food safety standards. Tayyebat constructed new walls, added doors to separate their production area from the rest of their facility, fixed all the wall openings, reinforced window mesh and installed pest traps.

Alaa Osseiran, FSQ engineer at Tayyebat examining the metal detector on the production line

The FSQ improvements have aligned Tayyebat with regional standards and opened new markets for the company in Iraq, Libya, Angola, Kuwait, and Jordan.

In addition, the company has received conditional approval to supply French fries to an internationally recognized fast-food chain customer in Lebanon. Tayyebat’s FSQ improvements enabled it to draw on its own abilities and resources as well as adapt to overcome obstacles facing the agribusiness sector.

SAFER FOODS FOR CONSUMERS F2F FSQ’s partners have taken great strides toward improving the safety of products for consumers. In aggregate, F2F FSQ has 6

facilitated the correction of 71 non-conformities to international standards, which compromises food safety. Correcting these nonconformities has made partners’ products safer for consumers.

Basic infrastructure improvements often make a huge difference in food safety, such as eliminating contamination from pests, chemical, microbiological hazards, and heavy metals. Enhancements have included removing unnecessary objects from processing areas, adding hand washing stations, stainless-steel sinks, replacing wood material, adding, or replacing window mesh, repairing deteriorating infrastructure, and installing mildew-resistant doors, windows, ceilings, and floors. All of these represent quick wins that have a significant impact on the safety of the product. Alongside improvements to infrastructure, partner agribusiness increased their product safety by improving cleaning, hygiene, and pest management procedures, in addition to recall, and traceability processes, which creates the ability to track a product through each stage of processing to pinpoint where contamination or processing defaults has occurred.

Local volunteer Chiara visiting the program partner to follow up on volunteer recommendations

Two Basic Hazard Analysis Critical Control Point (HACCP) training courses were conducted by Land O’Lakes, Inc. food safety experts.

The volunteers trained the attendees on the prerequisite programs for HACCP, developing HACCP plans and monitoring its implementation.

During the sessions, the experts coupled the theoretical training with practical projects to help attendees gain valuable expertise in tackling food safety issues and developing well-structured HACCP plans.

Attendees included current food safety professionals in food industries and university students in food-related fields, representing the importance of changing current behaviors and practices that are deleterious to food safety while ensuring that the next generation of food professionals understand the importance of HACCP.

GLOBAL FOODS – BAKERY – KHALDEH Global Foods is a family-owned bakery located in Khaldeh, Beirut. To sustain the business in the recently stressed economy and enter new markets, the company sought to improve its food safety system and become compliant with GFSI benchmarked standards. Over the past two years, the F2F FSQ program has worked closely with Global Foods, providing three volunteer experts to find and address food safety gaps.

After investing more than $9,000 in food safety improvements, Global Foods introduced a new traceability system to conduct precise follow-up during all production stages. This has made Global Foods compliant with the GMaP requirements and the business has successfully renewed its GFSI benchmarked International Featured Standard (IFS) certification. As a result, Global Foods has passed the necessary audits certifying the production of safe food, per international standards.

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ADAPTATION AND IMPLEMENTATION OPPORTUNITIES

The F2F FSQ internship is a triple win, enhancing local graduates’ practical experience and increasing their chances for employment, increasing the FSQ capacity in the country, and contributing to FSQ improvement for the partner businesses.

Since 2020, the Lebanese people have suffered crisis after crisis. The already stretched economy collapsed when Lebanon defaulted on its debt, resulting in a sharp devaluation of the currency. The situation worsened with added stress to the economy and health care system from the COVID-19 pandemic. Then, in August 2020, the Beirut Sea Port explosion left the capital in destruction, thousands homeless, and shut down one of Lebanon’s main trade gateways. The currency value continued to decrease, reaching unprecedented levels in 2021 and increasing poverty throughout the country, leaving no sector unaffected.

Engrossed in these challenges, the F2F FSQ program adapted quickly to meet the increased needs of our program partners. With volunteer travel temporarily cancelled, the program implemented remote and U.S./local paired assignments to target new partner priorities. The program strategically shifted its assistance to concentrate on training partners on COVID-19 best practices and designing food safety emergency plans at their facilities to ensure workers’ safety and the continuation of production.

In 2021, the Lebanon team engaged graduate interns from local universities studying in FSQ-related fields to support the U.S. volunteer experts. The interns serve as the eyes and ears on the ground for the U.S. volunteer consultants and oversee conducting inspections and follow-ups. This has improved and increased the adoption of recommendations. The internship enhances the local graduates’ practical experience in the food industries and ultimately increases their chances for employment in the future, while supporting the work of F2F volunteers.

The extreme devaluation of the currency led local banks to freeze foreign assets. In response, the F2F team focused on assisting partners with improving their products’ safety and quality, per international standards through assignments targeting FDA approved product labels, product nutrition facts, and better packaging and label design. This enabled partners to reach international export markets, one of the few remaining sources of foreign currency.

The rise of poverty is coupled with the rise of food security concerns.

F2F launched agriculture training sessions in collaboration with the local Georges N. Frem Foundation (GNFF). Assisted by a remote volunteer, F2F and GNFF held two series of training sessions with the 8

Foundation’s network of established beneficiaries. The training focused on how to plant fruits and vegetables in their unused spaces and rooftops to ensure sustenance for their families. GNFF has since conducted six series of sessions on their own and continues to foster its relationship with the remote volunteer past F2F involvement.

About the Farmer-to-Farmer Food Safety and Quality Program

F2F FSQ volunteer experts work toward improving selected partner businesses food safety practices leveraging the Global Markets Programme created by the Global Food Safety Initiative.

Land O'Lakes Venture37 (Venture37) is implementing the Farmer-toFarmer Food Safety and Quality (F2F FSQ) Project to increase the profitability and market access in the agriculture sectors in Lebanon, Egypt, and Bangladesh — three countries that face considerable food safety and quality challenges. Leveraging the expertise of Land O’Lakes, Inc., a large Fortune 500 cooperative, Venture37 leverages the technical expertise of the company’s food safety employees, cooperative members, and their networks for up-to-date and cutting-edge industry knowledge in FSQ. Venture37 and expert volunteers work toward improving FSQ through each node of the targeted value chains in the respective countries by: 1) Supporting Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) using the Global Markets Programme (GMaP) created by the Global Food Safety Initiative (GFSI) 2) Working with industry and public sector actors to positively impact the enabling environment for FSQ. The evaluation of a host organization using the GMaP checklist results in a scorecard which lays out non-conformities to international standards and corrective actions to achieve compliance needs. F2F FSQ fields highly skilled experts to work with industry actors and the public sector to develop, improve and refine country standards, protocols, and legislation and assist SMEs to conform to specific international FSQ standards.

Venture37 supports partners in disseminating knowledge and adaptive learning across the agricultural and value-added agriculture landscape.

Returning volunteers are encouraged to share their experiences with their personal and professional networks to expand the reach of the project’s interventions, increase the awareness of the Farmer-to-Farmer program, and build deeper connections to those in the countries we are supporting.

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Since 1987, Land O’Lakes Venture37 has sent more than 1,400 U.S. highly qualified volunteers—including 166 of our affiliate Land O’Lakes, Inc. staff and cooperative members—on assignments in 27 countries. As a quality-driven food company, Land O’Lakes, Inc. is uniquely positioned to drive improvements in food safety and quality by offering a broad range of agricultural technical expertise.

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