Economic Effect of Conveyor-800 project On the South Of Lebanon

Abstract

Litany project was first implemented with the aim of encouraging small scale farmers to develop and grow and thus to boost the agricultural sector in the south of Lebanon. Conveyor 800 is a part of the project that is associated with the southern region that falls between elevations 400- 800 m, and which is still not implemented. The aim of this paper is to determine the potential economic impacts of Conveyor 800 on the south region, and if the availability of water for irrigation will impact farmers. To this effect, this study is based on original empirical data collected from farmers from the selected region in 2020. The data is analyzed using multiple regression analysis to find the relation between production and irrigation. The analysis shows that the access for irrigation water encourages farmers to adopt new cropping pattern and techniques and results in condensed and expanded production. Our regression results show that there is a positive significant relation between water available for irrigation and between production levels. Access to water for irrigation enables small scale farmers to increase their production and to shift towards producing high value crops and thus increases their income. The study concludes that if the project is successfully implemented with continuous monitoring then this will increase farmers’ income, profits and will help them reach a sustainable livelihood.