DOWN TO EARTH - II

For the last two thousand years at least, since the Jewish People had no homeland and were subject to the whims of their host countries, they were not allowed to own land and were very restricted in their livelihoods.  They only started working on the land again when the first pioneers emigrated to Israel in  1882 which was known at the time as Palestine, a name given to the area by the Romans. The original names, from bible times, were Judea and Samaria.

Which brings me back to the moshav in the Negev where I spent 40 years of my life. All our children helped out on the moshav from a very early age and learned the value of hard work, developing a strong “work ethos”. 

What is most surprising however is that,  somehow, my oldest son Azriel “inherited” love of the land. He knew he wanted to be a farmer from a very early age and, in order to study agriculture he went to the U.S., after his army duty, in order to make enough money to attend the Faculty of Agriculture in Rehovot. 

Through a contact with my husband’s American family, he was offered a job with a multi-millionaire who was the second biggest exporter of gold jewellery in New York. He proved so resourceful at the job that he was asked to stay on. His reply was “Thanks, but I would rather grow tomatoes in the Negev”.

One of the byelaws of the moshav is that one child in each family is given the opportunity of becoming the “successive son/daughter” and is entitled to a plot of land, together with infrastructure. It was obvious that Azriel would be the one to inherit. After obtaining his degree as an agronomist, he began to work for the Ministry of Agriculture in his chosen  field in “soil and water”. This was in 1987,only 39  years since the State of Israel was declared, and already the Ministry of Agriculture was sending agronomists to developed countries, such as France, and advising them on new systems of agriculture.

Although the work was interesting it was not enough of a challenge for Azriel – apart from the fact that he was being paid government salaries which are not high. He decided to take the risk of leaving his secure job and branching out on his own.  He had the idea of growing amaryllis bulbs for export but he didn’t have the necessary resources. One of the kibbutzim in Israel in which he was a consultant for  the Ministry of Agriculture was a neighbor of our moshav, kibbutz Sa’ad. He suggested entering into a 50/50 partnership with Sa’ad in which they would supply the  resources and he the expertise and responsibility for marketing.

They started out with one greenhouse on two dunams of land and today they have 150 dunams of greenhouses and an additional 150 dunams of open land, in Thailand. They grow and export amaryllis (a few types of which were developed by Azriel) and a type of lily bulbs to north America, Europe, Asia and China.