Written By: Zayne Abudaka and Hammam Othman
Palestinian life is filled with cultural references that tie Palestinians to their “natural environment.” The olive tree hasbecome a symbol of Palestinian steadfastness, and hardly a day passes in Palestine without a reference to the land, sea,and air that Palestinians have been denied. Despite the patriotic slogans, however, speaking about the environment andclimate challenges is considered to be a luxury in many Palestinian communities. Decades-long occupation has cloudedmost of the discourse, with many Palestinians considering any other conversation to be secondary or “less important” atbest, and “imported” or “Western,” at worst.
This understanding of the environment is extremely problematic, mainly because it ignores the importance ofenvironmental and resource sustainability to Palestinian liberation from occupation, dependency, and underdevelopment.While Palestine’s contribution to global greenhouse gas emissions is minuscule, the impact of climate change in Palestineis expected to be severe. In Palestine and the region, the combination of rising temperatures and decreased rainfall isexpected to dramatically increase demand for water, which is an already scarce resource, inflicting significant harm inagricultural production capacity. Combined with the impact of Israeli restrictions and settlement expansion on the waterresources and land area available for agriculture, climate challenges are expected to have catastrophic implications forfood security in Palestine. For this reason, efforts that focus on improving food security and sustainability in Palestine andthe region are likely to intensify.
Despite the absence of a clear and systematic approach to addressing environmental and climate challenges at the nationallevel, a number of renewable energy, water treatment, and waste management projects have been developed with supportfrom the Palestinian government and international donor organizations that today form the seed for environmentaltransformation. The development of these projects has mainly been driven by the need to ensure the sustainability of vitalresources such as energy and water at an affordable cost. To build on existing efforts, more actors need to pay attention toresource sustainability in the agriculture sector.
Out of over 5 million Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza, around a third (1.7 million, mostly in Gaza) are foodinsecure, and a further 16.8 percent (841,000) are marginally food secure.*1 Food insecurity is only expected to increasedue to population growth, increasing international commodity prices, and Israeli restrictions on trade (and associatedcosts), in addition to the reduced capacity for food production due to shrinking land area and water reserves.
Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza import most of their food, while their ability to produce their food on their land isincreasingly constrained. To ensure food security, Palestinians have little choice but to adopt technologies and practicesthat can radically improve conservation of soil quality, water resources, and other agricultural inputs. This could enablethe sector to grow sustainably to serve a growing population despite the challenges. Adopting more advancedtechnologies and cultivation methods such as hydroponic farming, vertical farming, and fully controlled and monitoredenvironments (greenhouses), can help farmers produce three to six times the amount of produce, with significantlyreduced water use and minimal levels of harmful chemicals. Hydroponic cultivation, for example, can save up to 95percent of the needed water for growing greens and a range of vegetables, including widely consumed, water-intensivecrops such as tomatoes and cucumbers.
Despite the great potential of agricultural technology in the Palestinian context, there are several challenges that impedeits development. Advanced agriculture is capital intensive and requires tight operational management and specializedexpertise, which is often lacking in the local market. The availability of risk capital to invest in agricultural technologydevelopment can significantly expedite the pace of transition.
Many Palestinians in the West Bank remember the images of cucumbers being disposed of in empty agricultural areas inTulkarem during 2020. The dissemination of the images on social media channels triggered a public conversation.Farmers reported their inability to sell their produce as storage costs mounted, leading them to dispose of the produce.
Difficulty in selling produce is a major challenge for farmers in Palestine and worldwide. Farmers often lack access to thenetworks, knowledge, or time to ensure that their produce reaches customers. Marketing and sales require time and accessto networks of resellers, wholesalers, and in some cases consumers directly. When farmers cannot access a feasible saleschannel, they dump their produce to avoid costly storage. In addition, the fluctuation in agricultural production, which ismainly caused by seasonality and the inability of markets to allocate produce rapidly and at a satisfactory price for boththe farmer and the consumer.
In our region, where the movement of people, products, and capital is restricted by layers of politics and bureaucracy, shortening supply chains could contribute to improved food security and the development of local productive industries, while playing a part in the region’s adaptive response to climate change. To allow for this gradual transition towards shorter supply chains, actors should pay more attention to improved efficiency and planning of the cultivation process to improve the management of supply quantities to match the less fluctuating demand.
Planning can be further improved through the adoption of advanced cultivation technologies. One advantage of controlled cultivation systems is that they enable farmers to grow crops during most of the year with shorter cultivation cycles. Thisallows farmers the flexibility to adjust their cultivation strategy throughout the year to smooth fluctuations in demand andsupply.
Sector stakeholders should also focus on innovative solutions to boost farmers’ access to local markets and reduce thenumber and control of intermediaries in the supply chain. With improved public access to the digital world, new toolscould be leveraged to better link farmers to traders and even to the end users directly, circumventing traditional openmarkets where producers have to compete with local representatives of much larger Israeli producers. In addition, usingcontrolled cultivation systems could help farmers produce much higher yields on smaller plots of land, with reduced needfor agricultural inputs such as soil, fertilizers, and pesticide. This enables farmers to set up farms closer to the urbanmarkets which they serve.
Importing agricultural inputs remains a significant cost for the Palestinian economy. In 2019, animal feed was Palestine’sthird-largest import in terms of value, with around US$204.6 million (9.6 percent of total import bill and 1.3 percent ofGDP in 2019) spent on imported preparations used in animal feed. In addition, conversations with local producers ofanimal feed indicate that most of the inputs used in local production of animal feed are also imported from or throughIsrael. In the same year, the value of imported fertilizers reached US$9 million. Although this amount is much smallerwhen compared to animal feed imports, the official figures are likely to be skewed due to the informality of fertilizerpurchases from Israel. Israel currently bans standard concentration fertilizers typically used for intensive agriculture; thiscontinues to be a major impediment to the sector’s development and drives farmers to avoid reporting purchases offertilizers outlawed by Israel.
The increase in input prices is one of the main issues that face the agricultural sector in Palestine and is sometimes themain reason behind the losses incurred by farmers. Farmers report increases in input prices over the previous years withan average annual growth of 10 percent. The reasons behind the increase include the fluctuation of the dollar exchangerate against the Israeli shekel and increases in petrol prices. In addition, trading in pesticides and fertilizers is limited to anumber of trade agencies that import heavily from Israel and control final prices for Palestinian users.
Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza generate a significant amount of organic waste; around 50 percent of the 1.58million tons of daily municipal solid waste in the West Bank and Gaza is considered organic waste (790,000 tons).Organic waste from both households and the agricultural sector can be an important input to produce some of the mostessential products needed to establish a sustainable agriculture sector, such as animal feed and fertilizers.
Developing fertilizers and animal feed products from locally sourced organic waste can unlock a structural challenge forthe development of Palestinian food security. Relying on by-product from local industries, resource-dependency on theIsraeli market could be challenged while also growing local businesses and creating jobs for Palestinians. The localproduction of agricultural inputs can also significantly contribute to the shortening of supply chains, which result insavings in time and money required from farmers and a reduction in the carbon footprint associated with transportingproduce.
To develop new agricultural inputs locally, a number of efforts need to be coordinated among key sector actors. Seedcapital is needed to conduct research and test different combinations of inputs in order to identify products that are at leastequivalent to imported options, in terms of price, quality, and nutritional value. To ensure feasibility and scalability, largelocal actors such as private-sector dairy producers, larger agribusinesses, and the government should be the first to adoptthe new local products.
Examples provided in this article are not an exhaustive list of possible interventions nor are they a silver bullet thatpromises to solve all of Palestine’s problems. We believe, however, that by investing in resource sustainability, especiallyrelating to food security, actors will ultimately strengthen the resilience of Palestinians living on their land and providethem with more agency over their own well-being and development.
The road to change is not going to be easy. The transition will require large amounts of capital, specialized expertise,innovative business models, and most importantly, the will and determination of the various actors in the agriculturalsector.
To start addressing the challenges cited above and other social and economic challenges in Palestine and the region, wepropose a scientific approach, anchored in continuous testing and validation to ensure its fit to the local context. We muststrive to understand the problem by researching pressing environmental challenges and measuring their impact onPalestinian society and economy. Sizing the magnitude of the problem and identifying the key affected actors are criticalfirst steps to engaging policy makers and the private sector in efforts to respond quickly and effectively to climatechallenges. Efforts must be made to identify potential solutions through studying international similar experiences anddrawing lessons from similar contexts. Pilot projects must be developed to test the compatibility of proposed solutionsand carefully situate them in the local context. And we must invest in scaling up successful pilots to become sustainableimpactful businesses.
Originally published in April 2021 issue of ‘This Week in Palestine‘