Israelis
shared their agricultural expertise with Palestinian farmers seeking
to improve their avocado crops.
A group of Palestinian agronomists and
agricultural engineers recently completed training in avocado cultivation at
the Galilee International Management Institute (GIMI) in Nahalal, northern
Israel.
The avocado was chosen because of the
ever-increasing global demand for the vegetable, which is considered “green
gold.”
The purpose of the training was to
improve the Palestinians’ avocado crop. Participants toured the avocado
plantations in the north and met with Israeli avocado farmers.
The Palestinians came from the areas of
Hebron, Qalqiliya, Tubas and Jenin, and some already grow avocados for export
to Arab countries.
During the training, the Palestinians
expressed a desire to cooperate with Israeli growers to enable the export of
“Palestinian avocados” to Europe. Israel avocado exports to Europe have grown
to roughly 100,000 tons in recent years, comprising about a third of the winter
avocado market in European Union countries.
About 40 percent of the participants were
women, most of them agricultural entrepreneurs with a particular interest in
avocado growing.
Prof. Yair Hirshfeld, one of the
initiators of the Oslo Peace Accords,
lectured during the program on possibilities for cooperation in agriculture and
their implications for the peace process between Israel and the Palestinians.
The program was sponsored via combined
funding from The Middle East and the Peace Process Department at the Israeli
Foreign Ministry, in cooperation with the European Union through the agency of
Economic Cooperation Foundation and GIMI.
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