Saad Dagher
Agronomist
May 2002

We are witnessing in recent years a growing trend among farmers in using herbicides as an alternative to tillage in the fields of olives. This trend is expanding into new areas and villages that used to till manually.
So the question is: are we facing a phenomenon of replacing tillage with herbicides?! And is it a suitable alternative to be used?? More importantly, does the usage of such herbicides in the olive fields, really benefit the farmer?!

It is obvious that the rain fall in the last years and the incapability of the farmers to till their lands due to the rain has contributed in the growth of the weeds, since a little time is left for the farmers to do the agricultural shores and cultivate their lands due to the moisture of the soil which do not allow tillage in the first place.

The problem is that Despite the farmers had the opportunity to cultivate, till their land or not, the promotion of  spraying  herbicides is expanding , justifying that it is less expensive than tillage, or that the sprayed  trees  grows better and produces better crop.

Saad Dagher
Agronomist
2002 

The Estimated area planted with olive trees in the West Bank  is about 850 thousand Donums, with approximately 9 million trees, the area planted with olive trees is about 70% of the total area planted, it is contributing to about  25% of the total  income of the agricultural sector.

The olive oil production in the fruitful seasons is about 30 thousand tons, whereas in the low seasons the production reaches about 10 thousand tons, or less.

The decrease of the olive production in the last few years came out of many reasons, and mainly because of the inability to market the Palestinian olive oil in the international markets, which created marketing problems that affected the income of olive growers in particular and the rural population in general, which contributed to declining productivity of the olive tree. In addition to the lack of rain in recent years and the drought that the region is passing through, made a clear impact on declining the productivity.

The direct effects of the drought are:
1. The decrease of the income of the olive growers, who tend to be in the Palestinian rural areas, a population of more than 60% of the total population.

Saad Dagher
Agronomist
1998

The organic production methods started to develop in many countries in the world at the beginning of the twenties, a new agricultural concept named BIODYNAMIC has appeared in 1924 in France.
The early pioneers in the organic agriculture have called it with many names such as environmental agriculture, bio agriculture, organic agriculture, biodynamic agriculture and bio intensive agriculture all these names are synonyms that refer to one consensus name which is organic agriculture, that aims to produce food free of toxins and sufficient to feed the human beings with more sustainable methods without harming the environment. The problem of multiple names has become less severe after the formation of the International Federation of Organic Agriculture Movements IFOAM.
 
The spread of organic agriculture have increased rapidly at the global level. The estimated annual increase to organic agriculture instead of chemicals-based agriculture is about 20%. IFOAM started in 1972, with five organizations, whereas after fifteen years it included 100 organizations from 25 countries, nowadays the number of organizations that joined the Federation is more than 800 organizations from more than 100 countries.