Banana republic (so facile)

An extensive article on banana farming and its export potential in Lebanon. Its not a bad article, with lots of useful background info. But it forgets to tell us that the reason why banana cropping has been so successful in Lebanon is that the successive Hariri governments have singled it out for protection, and they have imposed tariffs on banana imports. This was exceptional and did not apply to any other fruit crops, like apples for instance, which are grown in the mountains. I'm not sure why they did that, but it may be related to the fact that many of the large scale banana farmers are from Saida, Hariri's town.