The Egyptian government has long subsidized bread as part of its social support program. This subsidized bread, known as baladi bread, is eaten daily by most Egyptians. Drawing on archival research and interviews with range of people involved in the subsidy program, this paper traces the evolution of baladi bread since the subsidy’s inception in the 1940s. I show how the becoming of baladi bread has been shaped by two key concerns: the maintenance of a sufficient, unfailing supply of bread and the production of a bread that the general public deems acceptable. I look, first, at the bread’s price and size. For millions of Egyptians, this cheap staple food is a lifeline. Yet for the government, which covers the difference between what the consumer pays and the actual cost of producing that bread, the program is extremely expensive. Over the years, successive governments have struggled with setting a bread price that their budget can cover and which is acceptable to the public. They have also deployed changes in the size of the loaf as a way of trimming the costs of the program. Official size regulations do not always translate, though, into the size of the loaves that bakeries, which are government-licensed but privately-owned, produce. Second, I look at the bread’s composition, which is key both to the bread’s taste and the cost of its production. Different governments have experimented with mixing other grains (namely corn) into the bread, changing the level of refinement of the wheat flour that constitutes the bread’s chief ingredient, and fortifying it with vitamins. In the process, officials have weighed various taste parameters with the necessity of ensuring the ongoing production of a huge quantity of bread. I argue that these changing specifications for baladi bread are illustrative of a broader set of practices that I term “staple security.” In Egypt, the possibility that there might not be decent bread to eat is an existential threat – a threat both to Egyptians’ sense of wellbeing and to the stability of the state. Staple security, therefore, refers to the everyday ways in which people go about countering this threat and ensuring the continuous supply of a quality staple at an individual, household, or national scale. This paper demonstrates how this process plays out at the national level through government efforts to ensure that the population has affordable, decent bread to eat.

If the climate emergency has messages to communicate, including implicit messages transmitted through desication of leaves and putrefaction of roots, then the language sciences have much to contribute to environmental research. In particular, the ‘reading’ (in a broad sense) of such messages by humans, and the messages’ subsequent mediation to a network of stakeholders, is ordered by hierarchies of discursive authority linked to language ideologies (Gal & Woolard 2001). Such is the argument of this paper, which examines the discourses of olive cultivators, humanitarians, campaigners and scientists, and politicians, in the cases of Battir and Al-Walaja in a borderzone valley south of Jerusalem, where rainfall patterns and average temperatures are changing. Based on six months (2019/20) of participant observation with six families that grow and process olives, and eleven interviews with institutional actors connected to them, the paper presents discourse as the negotiation of relationships. Specific speech patterns and terms relevant to climate change demonstrate different attitudes to types of discourse: inherited, practical, moral, scientific, and political and gendered discourses. The analysis shows that each actor/speaker attributes superior functions to their own repertoires. In particular, women, who make oil and other products for household consumption, find the discourse that communicates their environmental knowledge low in the hierarchy of social valuation. Overlaps exist between different actors: humanitarians and olive growers are interested in commercial viability, campaigners and politicians are atuned to media coverage, whereas scientists and cultivators value empirical information. The paper is interdisciplinary in essence, drawing on anthropology, politics and political economy. Its theoretical contribution is to bring sociolinguistics, and its methods for analysing the creation of meaning in interactions, into the debate on the political future of the environment. Rather than viewing cultivators as ‘traditional’ sources of discourse data, this method privileges the connection between nature and culture beyond the frame of modernity that is actively damaging the environment (Descola 2013). Communities of cultivators and food producers, who bring olive oil to the tables, are underrecognised experts on this connection. Identifying language ideologies is a step towards such recognition for supporting resilience in communities that are directly exposed to the effects of climate change in a conflict zone.

The significance of grains in Syrian history cannot be overstated. During the early twentieth century, 50 to 90% of the average Syrian diet consisted of wheat and grains such as barley, sorghum, and corn. Wheat was also integral to the Syrian economy: in 1920, three quarters of farmed lands were planted with cereals, half of which were wheat. In remote areas of Syria where cash transactions remained rare until after World War II, grain was used as barter. Bread and burghul, parboiled wheat, were eaten at almost every meal, particularly among poorer classes for whom the cost of meat and vegetables was prohibitive. Bread has been a staple of Syrian cuisine for around ten thousand years; in many ways, Syrians of the 20th century consumed breads that would have been familiar to their ancestors. In other ways, as a result of climactic changes, colonialism and technological innovations, the production, procurement and consumption of grain products underwent significant changes. Climate fluctuation and market irregularities that affected the price of grain had an impact on the entire country, whether reflected in bread prices, the need to import grain from abroad, or the purchasing power of grain producers. The expansion of roads and the use of motor vehicles along with the introduction of mechanized milling during the interwar period led to a greater dependence on sources outside of one’s quarter or village for flour. Instead of grinding flour on handheld mills at home or at a local mill, rural Syrians brought their wheat to larger motor-powered mills miles from home. During times of dearth, some millers were known to add adulterants to flour. An increase in imports from abroad, a burgeoning middle class, and changing tastes, as well as the creation of Western nutritional science during the interwar years resulted in changes in eating habits, particularly among Syrians of means and urbanites. Rice became more and more affordable, and those with more money increased their consumption of meat and other foods in place of wheat. With the use archives, ethnographic research, contemporaneous memoirs, and economic data, this paper will examine the material history of bread and grains in Syria during the 20th century, with a focus on the interwar period. The cultivation, storage, preparation, purchase and consumption of these foods will be illustrated, in order to determine the changes in practice that took place, as well as those factors that remained constant.

Mouneh, from the verb “mana” in Arabic, refers to foods produced through traditional practices of preservation. These techniques developed over time in Lebanon, initially for sustenance during winter months when fresh vegetables and fruit were lacking. This paper investigates their importance in the contemporary moment, at a time when Lebanon has been going through an economic recession, which has translated into the devaluation of its currency and a rise in food prices. In a context where approximately 80% of the food is imported, using fresh produce and transforming it into preserves is a way for women to ensure food quality for their family, save money, and socialise with other members of their community. This paper draws on four months of ethnographic research with Christian and Muslim middle-class women in the greater Beirut area who make Mouneh. I begin with an ethnographic description of the practice of Mouneh making in an urban context, explaining the supply network for sourcing ingredients, the collective and individual modes of production, and the ways of producing the five categories of Mouneh (fruits, vegetables, herbs, meat, and dairy) and reasons why some are not produced in Beirut. I then discuss the reasons women give for making Mouneh, despite the difficulty of finding high quality fresh produce in the city, the abundance of fresh fruits and vegetables year-round, and Mouneh being available in shops. The paper agues first that Mouneh making is a form of care, through which women act as caretakers of their family, and second, that it is a means of survival in the face of political and economic instabilities. Mouneh is a way of controlling the family’s health, which has traditionally been the responsibility of the mother, it’s also the assurance that the family will be able to maintain food habits if the situation worsens. Overall, Mouneh is a symbol of certainty in an uncertain future and way of creating a comforting feeling of abundance. Through this analysis, the paper provides insights on a practice that has been little discussed since the work of Aïda Kanafani-Zahar, the Lebanese anthropologist, in the 1990s. Whereas Kanafani-Zahar’s focus was rural, this paper looks at how these traditional food practices are integrated into the contemporary urban context and their significance following recent political events. The paper shows the continuing importance of these traditional practices like Mouneh as a coping mechanism for times of uncertainty.