ISRAEL21c visits Israeli farm country, where a revived and thriving
agriculture industry benefits Jewish and Arab residents.
By Abigail Klein
Leichman 19-9-2019
They couldn’t
believe we were living on a rocky hill. They said, ‘You cannot eat from this
land! You won’t last long.’ But now my grandchildren are here too,” Rozenblum
told a group of journalists in the herb-packing house at Moshav Naama, an
agricultural community of 50 families.
Premium Medjoul
dates are the main crop grown on the 21 Israeli communities of the Jordan
Valley, including Moshav Naama. According to the Israel Plants Production and
Marketing Board, farms in the Jordan and Arava valleys provide the majority of
the Medjoul dates in the world market.
“Thirty-five years
ago, you didn’t see one date here. It was all desert,” says Rozenblum.
The pioneers used
Israeli agricultural advances, including drip irrigation with purified
wastewater, to turn the valley into an oasis of date orchards, reviving a crop
that thrived here in biblical times.
Long since moved off
the hilltop, Moshav Naama has 5 hectares (about 12.5 acres) of date palms,
annually producing between 50 and 70 tons of fruit sold through cooperatives
under various brand names.
The families here
also grow herbs, organic vegetables and table grapes. Rozenblum’s son raises
tropical fish for export.
Not only did the
original residents happily prove their friends in Jericho wrong, but they
shared their cultivars and ag-tech expertise. As a result, several Jericho
families were able to revitalize the city’s prosperous ancient date industry
that had lain dormant for many years despite its abundant natural springs,
Rozenblum says.
Ruled by Jordan from
1949 to 1967, and by Israel from 1967 to 1994, Jericho now is administered by
the Palestinian Authority. Israeli citizens may enter only with a special
permit.
But the warm working
relationships forged in the 1980s and early 1990s continue to bear fruit.
Jericho residents are among the 6,000 to 9,000 Palestinian Arabs – depending on
the season — who rely on the Israeli farms of the Jordan Valley for employment.
Harvesting and
packing dates, peppers, grapes, herbs and even pineapple in these 21
communities pays double the money they would earn doing agricultural work in
Palestinian villages, Rozenblum says.
Jordan Valley
Regional Council Mayor David Alhayani puts it this way: “We want them to work
with us and they want to work with us.”
On his own farm,
Rozenblum grows sweet basil and tarragon all year in greenhouses.
Because temperatures
in the Jordan Valley can climb to 35 degrees Celsius (95 Fahrenheit) on summer
days, the packing house is air-conditioned to keep workers comfortable while
they sort and box the herbs for export.
“We ship via air to
Europe, the United States, Canada, Hong Kong and Japan. By the next day it’s in
the supermarket,” says Rozenblum.
In the past few
years, a new crop of young Israelis began moving to the area, some of them returning
to where they were raised. Although 70% of adults in the Israeli Jordan Valley
communities work in agriculture, not all the newcomers are interested in
farming.
“It’s a wonderful
place to live and to raise children, and we are only 45 minutes from the center
of Jerusalem and one and a half hours from Tel Aviv,” says Rozenblum. “Our
children are coming back for the quality of life.”
