The Palestinian Agroecology Forum (PAF) is one of the community initiatives that shared their story with us in their own words:
“Agriculture in Palestine is deteriorating at an alarming rate. It is being transformed into a large-scale, chemical-based agriculture, fully reliant on external production inputs and technologies. In the past, no one enjoyed the individual freedom as much as Palestinian farmers, but nowadays they find themselves chained to giant agrochemical companies that control their production and livelihoods through sterile and genetically modified seeds and agrochemicals.
This transformation has contributed to several hard-to-resolve problems. The biggest of these problems is the damage to soil and biodiversity, the recent spread of diseases related to the extensive use of chemicals, and the overexploitation of water resources needed in chemical-based agriculture.
This is in addition to the loss of the rich traditional agricultural knowledge, accumulated over many generations. The system this has created is socially and economically unjust, with the loss of direct interaction between farmers and consumers, and the creation of middlemen, who pose a financial burden on farmers and consumers alike, by minimizing the revenue of farmers and increasing the cost on consumers.
The Palestinian Agroecological Forum emerged in 2018 by a group of volunteers whose aim is to provide a platform for all those who believe in rethinking our current food systems and want to reconnect to the land. We aspire for a just food system that ensures the dignity and independence of our farmers, preserves our natural resources, and provides clean and nutritious food to people. We consider agroecology to be the “agriculture of freedom and liberation”, with that it holds in its deep humanistic values, as it leads to freedom from disease, freedom from the control of major industries producing GMO seeds and agrochemicals, and freedom from the price control. by middlemen. It is the freedom of choosing our food, the freedom of farming and the freedom of production of seeds. It is the road to food sovereignty.
Out of this belief, we started planning for different activities to promote agroecology such as volunteering with families and farmers to apply ecological farming techniques. We are also in the process of building a database for agroecological farmers, the first database of its kind in Palestine, in order to facilitate access to those farmers for knowledge exchange and direct purchase of produce. Preservation of natural resources is another goal we are working towards as part of a holistic approach to achieve food sovereignty. In winter of 2018, in cooperation with Manjala initiative and with the support of volunteers, we started a popular campaign for the revival of springs in nature. In this campaign we are piloting simple water retention techniques combined with planting trees on a piece of land in Mazare’ An-Nubani, for the purpose of increasing water absorption in the soil and eventually recharging groundwater and reviving dried up springs.
Additionally, we hold activities aiming at increasing biodiversity and the vegetation cover through making and distributing seed balls (of local wild plants) in nature. Different hiking groups answered our call for support and provided us with seeds they either gather in their hikes or even buy. They also participated in the making and distribution of seed balls in nature.
The Palestinian Agroecological Forum strives to unite all the efforts and expertise in Palestine with the aim of ultimately creating a strong movement in this field. In the future, we look forward to the adoption of agroecology in conjunction with community-supported agriculture as a practical alternative for the advancement of the agricultural sector in Palestine and towards achieving food sovereignty.”
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Volunteering Opportunities: All activities are open for volunteers. Follow the group on Facebook.