American shares cheese expertise with Bekaa families
Tuesday, July 11, 2006
By Ian Lye
Special to The Daily Star
BEKAA: Tucked away amid the windswept slopes of craggy Mount Sannine, shepherds tend flocks of sheep and goats that speckle the rolling hills. The vistas here are magnificent, overlooking the fertile plain of the Bekaa Valley. It is only an hour's drive or so from Beirut but seems an entire universe away from the maddening crowds and traffic jams of the capital. High above, a falcon glides effortlessly through the air. You almost expect to see the Marlboro Man cresting the next ridge at any moment.
It is here, in the desolateness of this Levantine Shangri-La, where the improbable sight of a 69-year-old American goat rancher commanding the rapt attention of a group of veiled women is playing out.
"You have to bring the milk to 65 degrees. Otherwise the bacteria will not be killed, and people might get sick!"
The voice is sharp and authoritative, one that is not used to being questioned. Ginger Olsen, a born-and-bred New Yorker, is passion personified, and this quality is encapsulated in the quasi-evangelical fervor with which she delivers her lecture - with the help of an interpreter. The cheese expert is in the Bekaa Valley to teach local goat and sheep farmers new methods of making cheese.
The women present today are from the Atrash family, who live here in the highlands of the Lebanon Mountain Range with their herd of goats and sheep from late April to the first snowfalls in November. While the men tend the herds, it is the women who produce cheese to supplement their income.
"The cheese that they sell now isn't made from pasteurized milk, so people are afraid to buy it and with good reason," Olsen says. "I'm going to teach them how to pasteurize the milk at a low temperature, which will not change the taste," she reveals with a grin. Adding a culture later on in the process, she explains, eventually results in a cheese that is "delicious and can keep for up to one year."
Olsen, who has been in Lebanon for two weeks, was invited by Action for Sustainable Agro-Industry in Lebanon, (ASAIL) which has received funding from the US Agency for International Development to help support its efforts to enhance the competitiveness of local small and medium enterprises (SMEs), producers and processors in the sectors of small ruminants and niche Lebanese products.
According to ASAIL senior field coordinator Hassan Istaytiyyeh, who has his own sheep and goat ranch in the Eastern Bekaa village of Al-Qaa, many small ruminant producers in the region are struggling.
"They are often paid less than what it costs to produce a liter of milk," he says.
A liter of goat's milk, for instance, costs an average of $0.43 to produce. Very often, producers are only able to sell it for about $0.33.
One such producer is the Atrash family. Hailing from the village of Ersal in the Eastern Bekaa, an isolated community of about 36,000 inhabitants, ruminant herding is the only way of life that they have known for generations. They currently own about 450 sheep and goats. Like many of their community, however, the family is finding it harder and harder to survive. Increasing poverty, rising prices, and modernization have all taken their toll, leaving them to fight an increasingly desperate struggle for survival. Their business seems to be on its last legs.
"We've been losing money for the last five years or so," says Hussein Atrash, 30, one of the ruling patriarch's 12 children. "Things used to be better, but the prices of feed and the land rent have gone up."
"We can last another one or two years at best," he adds. He says he does not know what the family will do after that.
Olsen, a self-made goat and cheese producer herself, knows just how hard and cruel the business can be. On the verge of bankruptcy as a goat-milk producer, it was only after the ex-teacher cut a niche for herself in the cheese-making business that her accounting books started to show black ink. Undaunted by countless failures, Olsen continued to experiment, and her efforts finally paid off, culminating in a Best of Show Award at the American Cheese Society's annual contest in 2002.
Those experiences, coupled with a burning desire to pass on the lessons she learned so painfully, have driven her to volunteer in Lebanon. Since arriving, she has worked with various independent producers.
"It's safe, saleable and delicious," Olsen says of the cheese she produces. "If these women can make a cheese that's safe, then they can make money."
"It's not just about the women, but the whole community," she reflects over a hearty lunch of salad and the lamb the Atrash family has slaughtered in her honor. "I guess I just really want to see farmers make money at farming."