Published in The Observer, on 17th of July 2011: "People in Arab countries have always relied on bread as a low-cost source of sustenance. In Yemen alone there are more than 20 different kinds of bread, each made and baked differently.
In Egypt, bread is known as aish, meaning "life". It is the inseparable companion of all dishes, even some desserts. The Fertile Crescent, stretching from the Egyptian Nile to the mouth of the Tigris and Euphrates, is where agriculture began, where wheat, lentils, chickpeas, sheep and goats and olives were first cultivated.
Today, that same region is the largest importer of food in the world. [...] Although the Arab revolutions were united under the slogan "the people want to bring down the regime" not "the people want more bread", food was a catalyst."
Read the full article here.
Dr Rami Zurayk's blog Land and People.
Rami Zurayk is a professor of agricultural and food sciences at the American University of Beirut and author of Food, Farming and Freedom: Sowing the Arab Spring (Just World Books). Find it on amazon.
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