The family-run Bioland company from Lebanon has been promoting green products. It sells food on its 4 farms at prices slightly above the current standards for traditionally grown crops and meat.
“Organic products should not be sold as luxury; it’s just a return to how our grandparents used to farm and eat before commercial farming became the norm, ”said Gilbert Khoury, Bioland’s CEO.
"Failure to use chemicals and artificial fertilizers can reduce productivity by only 10-15%." Today, Bioland farms produce 80 certified organic products, including fruits, vegetables, olive oil, honey and aromatic herbs.
The company, which also runs three stores, a restaurant and a bakery, is the brainchild of Lebanese engineer Henri Bou Obeid.
Returning to Lebanon in 2003, he bought a plot in the village of Sgar, about 60 km. north of Beirut, to create a family farm that brought so much harvest five years later that he decided to launch Biolend.
Having received organic certification from the world famous Italian company CCPB, Bioland began to supply environmentally friendly products to consumers in surrounding areas.
In 2014, the first organic grocery store was opened in the Beirut region of Ahrafiyeh, and today it serves about 70 business customers in 2/3 of Lebanon’s major cities. In total, the company has 600 thousand m² of cultivated organic land.
