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News from the Region
2007 Olive Harvest Delegation

Report #2, Part 2 of 6
Meeting with Farmers in Jenin

By Mike White

Nasser Abufarha, Director of Canaan Fair Trade Association, explaining the olive oil bottling process. The vats behind the group store the oil produced by small farmers.

Jenin, November 1-2 - Our experience of meeting and staying with Palestinian farmers who participate in the Palestine Fair Trade Association was very interesting. The PFTA promotes organic and fair trade olive oil and other locally grown products. We met with Nasser Abufarha, who explained the extensive process necessary for organic certification and fair trade certification, and how the revenues from the olive oil enable to PFTA to promote small women’s co-ops, fund a tree planting program, and provide scholarships for local students to attend university.

We then attended a very warm and welcoming olive harvest festival, including a wonderful meal and lots of exuberant music and dancing celebrating the olive harvest. Only men danced and our Adam Horowitz participated.

We then went in groups to nearby villages where we were guests of local families. There is no way to describe them except as extremely warm and giving, trying to anticipate our every need and offering food and warmth. With our non-existent Arabic and their limited English we did our best to communicate, and discussed difficulties of living here and the beauty of this country.  All the women slept in one room (slumber party), the men in another (snoring party).

After a sumptuous home-baked breakfast, we walked to an olive grove to join with local families in picking olives. Once again, our hosts provided us with cool drinks and candy as we worked with them. It was distressing to see a huge fence with armored cars and soldiers patrolling just a few feet from the olive trees we were picking.

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