The Ministry of Agriculture and Food Security is fighting a Finance Ministry plan to cut 105 staff positions from its Training and Professional Service and privatize it as part of the 2025 budget.
The service invites and collates research and uses it to run courses for farmers in branches such as field crops, citrus, fish technology and farm economics.
The Treasury says the cuts will save NIS 85 million ($22.7 million) over three years. If approved, they will be in addition to 145 Agriculture Ministry posts slashed over three years as part of the 2024 budget, which started with 95 firings in January.
According to an Agriculture Ministry statement, the two rounds of job cuts will mean an overall 20 percent cut in staff, contributing to the possible collapse of farming in the long term and even food shortages within a few years.
The plan, which the government will vote on at the end of October, is included in the final draft of the Economic Arrangements Bill, which accompanies the 2025 budget, presented on October 14.
The cuts also contradict plans by the Tekuma Administration, which the government set up to rehabilitate the communities within seven kilometers (4.3 miles) of the Gaza border.
In its first progress report last week, Tekuma described programs to expand farming and train a new generation of farmers as part of the region’s reconstruction.
However, with Israel at war on multiple fronts, the Finance Ministry is dealing with a growing budget deficit.
However, the cuts are a blow to the Agriculture Ministry, Israeli farmers and the pressing need to ensure the country’s food security, underlined since Hamas’s deadly invasion on October 7 last year.
Turkey, for example, halted exports to Israel of tomatoes, which usually account for a quarter of the 200,000 tons consumed annually, sparking price rises.
In Eilat, southern Israel, one of the country’s three ports is barely functioning because of attacks by Iran-backed Houthis in Yemen.
Israeli farmers have been battered for years by government policies that encourage fresh produce imports without helping them compete.
No food security strategy
Earlier this year, the Agriculture Ministry added Food Security to its title.
It is leading an interministerial initiative to create a National Food Security Plan for 25 years.
David Levy, general manager of the Israel Association of Field Crop Growers, said of Agriculture Minister Avi Dichter (Likud), “He’s very thorough, asks a lot of questions, tries to understand the situation, and goes out to the fields with his teams.”
But according to Levy, while there is a “listening ear,” Dichter has “no control over the money.”
Israeli farmers were once the pride of Israel, the embodiment of the Zionist ideal of returning to the land.
The depth to which agriculture has sunk over recent decades is described in a lengthy report (in Hebrew) prepared by Dr. Liron Amdur for HaShomer HaChadash (New Guardians) that will be presented to Dichter in the coming weeks.
HaShomer HaChadash, established in 2007, sends volunteers to guard farms (and, latterly, urban areas) and seeks to educate for Zionism, a love of the land, and a return to agricultural ideals and practice. It has had many leading figures on its board and maintains close relationships with ministries and the KKL-JNF Jewish National Fund.
The report says that while 90% of fruits and vegetables are produced in Israel (mainly for the local market), 90% of grains, sugar and fish are imported. This means that around 80% of the calories in the Israeli diet, and 96% of the wheat and other grains, come from imports or depend on them.
The number of farm owners has dropped from 45,000 in 1990 to 13,000 today, with most Jewish farmers in their 50s and 60s, the report says.
Just 0.9% of employed Israelis work in agriculture, down from 4% in 1990, compared with an average of 4.5% in the OECD.
Only 0.2% of the state budget is invested in agriculture, the report continues, which is lower than in OECD countries. This money comes mainly from tariffs on certain food imports, small subsidies for agricultural insurance, and investment in training and research — the latter now under threat.
The report gives examples of how other countries with similarities to Israel, such as Qatar and Singapore, are moving towards some level of food independence. It contains multiple recommendations.
These include creating a government authority for food security and preparing a strategic plan that innumerate appropriate budgets; increasing the funding for agriculture and the food systems; incentivizing researchers to test and apply their knowledge in Israel, and extending state-subsidized insurance policies to farmers to encourage them to try new varieties or techniques that might not work.
The report pushes for increasing water to allow fruit and vegetable farmers to produce enough to keep up with 2% population growth per year, and allowing for irrigation of wheat as temperatures rise; reducing food waste; and shortening the food supply chain through farm-to-table programs.
Food security needs an extra 1.4 million acres of farmland
The report cites an unpublished 2021 Agriculture Ministry paper, which said achieving food independence and security would be possible by earmarking 5.7 million dunams (1.4 million acres) for agriculture by 2050 (when the population is forecast to hit 16 million). This would mean adding 1.5 million dunams (more than 370,000 acres) over 25 years to what exists, or around 60,000 dunams (15,000 acres) per year.
The HaShomer HaChadash report calculated this was possible, given that some 6.5 million dunams (1.6 million acres) had not yet been designated for agriculture, development, nature reserves, or national parks.
“Unbelievably, this and previous governments have neglected food security,” Yoel Zilberman, CEO and co-founder of HaShomer HaChadash, told The Times of Israel. “Israeli agriculture is an existential need.”
“We’ve depended on Turkey, Jordan and Ukraine, which has put us at real risk.”
Established in 2007 by Zilberman, a farmer originally from Moshav Tzippori in northern Israel, and On Rifman, from Kibbutz Revivim in the Negev, HaShomer HaChadash shares some characteristics with HaShomer, a Jewish defense organization founded in pre-state Palestine in April 1909 to help guard Jewish settlements.
However, while the original organization grew out of Socialist Zionism, the current one is often seen as right-wing. Zilberman insists that it is apolitical.
“The organization has gone through stages,” he explained. It started by addressing a lack of security and workers on farms. It moved on to creating an educational infrastructure that today includes a youth movement of more than 22,000 3rd to 12th graders (including 3,000 from the Bedouin community), six agricultural boarding schools (the aim is 100), pre-army and army and national service programs, and post-army jobs.
Zilberman said the organization had sent 300,000 volunteers to help Israeli farmers after foreign laborers flew home in the wake of Hamas’ invasion of southern Israel on October 7.
It has also launched companies to raise funds for young farmers and agricultural and food technology development.
“We see ourselves like a commando force, like a tugboat that guides the big ship into the port,” he explained. “We are creating an infrastructure that will enable the government to take things forward in a wider and more strategic way.”
‘Narrow-minded focus on food prices’
Zilberman accused the Finance Ministry of a narrow-minded focus on food prices, noting that increased imports had not cut supermarket prices. “They promised us competition, but they forgot that a few big wholesalers, owned by a few families, control the entire food chain,” he said.
The Agriculture Ministry agreed in a statement that lowering tariffs and encouraging imports had failed to bring prices down while causing farming to decline.
Zilberman added: “We work hard to get the Israeli and Jewish worlds to understand that we are in danger because of our food dependence, but that this is also one of our biggest opportunities.”
“If we, as the Start-Up Nation, can bring food and water solutions to our whole region, we can change the relationships,” said Zilberman.
