Addressing a food crisis

On 13 December 2023 the Israel Food Rescue volunteers accepted a gracious invitation from Deputy Minister Yuval Lipkin to visit the Ministry in Tel Aviv to meet his team and tour the experimental farms on the ministry campus. With Mr. Lipkin were Daniel Werner, Manager of International Agricultural Relations Special Projects, Shoshi Reshef Mor, head of Export Sales, and Hagit Brenner, Area Manager of Hashfelah and the Har. Over a platter of Israeli fruits and vegetables, the ministry team provided an overview of the challenges facing Israeli farms after the October 7 slaughters.?

Overnight there was a 55% reduction in the Israeli agriculture labor force, leaving a gap of 40 thousand workers to replace.

• 10 thousand Thai workers left Israel, from a base of 30 thousand workers before the murders.?

• 62 Thai workers were murdered by Hamas
• 20 thousand Palestinian workers cannot enter Israel for security reasons
• Israeli workers were called up as army reservists?

Currently, tens of thousands of Israelis are volunteering to help the farmers, but as our group has experienced, much of the harvesting and packing is skilled work, and daily volunteers lack the training needed to be effective. The ministry is working with many countries around the world to bring in additional long-term workers, who will be paid several times more than they could earn in their home countries. In addition to the higher salaries paid by farmers, the ministry supplements NIS 10,000 for three months of work. Workers near the Gaza border will have double the supplement, NIS 20,000 for three months. By June 2024, foreign workers should fill the gap, and Israeli workers will also be better trained; the ministry is working to educate farmers to accept long-term Israeli workers.?

As to crops currently being harvested, Mr. Lipkin identified tomatoes as a main product and explained that if tomatoes are not available in markets, the consumer sees weakness. Tomatoes have been imported from Turkey in recent years, but the rift in the diplomatic relations and the downgrade in popular opinion toward Turkey necessitate finding another source. Importing however incurs shipping and insurance expenses, adding to the consumer’s price.??

In terms of how the Ministry supports farmers, Mr. Lipkin explained they work through NGOs to provide funding to meet various needs, have set up a database to match volunteers to farmers, and provide expertise via the Volcani Institute.??

After the meeting, I had a brief moment to meet the Agriculture Minister, Avi Dichter.?Pausing the meeting he was in, the Minister welcomed me warmly and offered sincere gratitude for Israel Food Rescue's work.??

Our group was then treated to a tour of the ministry’s campus, meeting Associate Director of the Volcani Institute, Hinanit Kol Tai,? and Dr. Victoria Soroker, Apiculture (beekeeping) expert.? Dr. Soroker welcomed the group with tears, expressing her deep gratitude for our arrival. Like so many others we’ve met, she emphasized how surprising and gratifying she found it to see a group of mature adults committing weeks of their lives to work in Israel. She told us that a few months earlier she had hosted a group of apiculturists from Gaza and the West Bank, because Israel shares its science with the world, and that increased her shock at the slaughters of October 7. We saw an apiary from the time King Solomon ruled Israel around 970 BCE - a replica of one of 200 apiaries found in Tel Rechov - and one from the Turkish Empire, then the current apiaries and honey harvesting equipment.?

Next was the bovine center, where Dr. Uzi Moallem introduced us to the 400 cows of the Vulcani Institute and Israel’s veterinary school. Nutrition and reproduction are the main foci of study. He explained how they measure rumination time, movement, and recumbent time to study how to improve fertility and milk production. Dr. Moallem boasted that the highest producing dairy cows on earth are in Israel, in the Gaza Envelope. We visited the milking rooms and learned Vulcani’s milking system is exported to many American and global universities, which leverage superior Israeli milking and tracking technology.?

With that eye-opening information, we departed, delighted with all we’d learned.

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