Best Strategies to Support Farmers in Transitioning from Tobacco Farming to the Cultivation of HVMAPs: Case Study in Lebanon

Abstract

Medicinal and aromatic plants, besides being used in health and wellness industries, create an aesthetically pleasing scenery affecting the senses of vision (seeing the flowers), smell (smelling the flowers), sound (hearing the bees, birds), and taste (eating the plant-based products). Despite the multitude of benefits farmlands can offer, and the money flows it can attract, there are not always local policies, aimed at incentivizing farmers to provide such landscapes (Ciani 2014, Hatan, Fleischer et al. 2021). Allocation of agricultural land for the provision of organoleptic experiences on a farm will have a substantial multiplier effect on other ecosystem services (Simpson 2011). It is expected that when the current tobacco fields are converted into perennial herbal farmlands both for production and recreation, people will visit the farms for fun, solace, education and shopping. They could go plant gathering as a leisure and tourism activity, take therapeutic walks and practice meditation with plant-based essential oils, prepare local cuisine, discover regional customs, attend festivals, and share local history (Al-Obaidi, Desa et al. 2022). They would support the neighborhood economy and value chains by paying for experiences, services, and artisan goods. Measuring stakeholder desire to participate is crucial to develop workable policy frameworks for such entrepreneurship in agricultural settings. It is useful to know if a piece of land would be better kept to supply additional ecosystem services or allocated for direct provisioning ecosystem services only (Simpson 2011). It is also necessary to understand visitors’ feelings and perceptions of the aesthetic qualities of a landscape since it refers to its worth, relative to other values, resources, and human desires (Estruch-Guitart Vicent and Valles 2017).