The world's first organic and fair trade olive oil from Palestine

Farmers and growers often face obstacles in their line of work. Bureaucracy, erratic weather, the cost-price squeeze, all take their toll.

Spare a thought for the olive growers of the West Bank and Gaza. According to a United Nations report from October 2008: �Palestinian farmers working in their fields have faced incidents of crop theft, tree uprooting, harassment and physical attack�.

�Israeli movement restrictions affect access to fields, markets and processing; raising transport costs and impairing delivery schedules� according to the report.

The report also cites the blockade of Gaza, which has a sea port, as a contributory factor.

These barriers mean that surplus olive oil worth tens of millions of Euro can go unsold, which can in turn effect farmers' returns negatively.

This UN report was released before the 3 week bombing and ground invasion of Gaza in January 2009, which killed about 1400 people, and compounded the situation.

Over 100,000 Palestinian farmers depend on their olive crop for an income. However in the last decade the annual harvest and access to export markets has been severely disrupted by the problems outlined above and �by the conflict between Israeli settlers and Palestinian farmers�, according to the Fair Trade organisation.

A major factor has been the militancy of these settlements. The settlements are �illegal and an obstacle to peace and to economic and social development [... and] have been established in breach of international law� according to the International Court of Justice.

The settlements are populated by especially hardline expansionist Zionists. This inevitably causes tension with the local Palestinian population.

There are 121 official settlements and a further 100 outposts built more recently in the West Bank. These more recent outposts are also illegal under Israeli law.

The Settlements use three times the amount of water as the rest of the population of the West Bank. They also control about 40% of the land of the West Bank, and are connected to each other and Israel itself be a road network, much of which Palestinians are banned or severely restricted from using.

Residents from Settlements like Hallamish and Yitzhar regularly uproot almond, fig and olive tress and also confiscated land.

Hallamish settlers' recent confiscations occurred despite an Israeli court order last December, which awarded property rights to the local An Nabi Saleh population.

Each week, An Nabi Saleh residents protest over their loss of land. These protests invariably end in Israeli Army attacks with rubber coated steel bullets, stun grenades and tear gas. Indeed, the tear gas attacks are so ferocious that they often set fire to olive, fig and almond plantations, according to the weekly reports issued by the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA)

Despite these sort of agricultural conditions, Palestinians somehow manage to produce olive oil for export.

�Palestine may not be in the atlas, but we have put it on the shelves.� So says Nasser Abufarha, founder of the Palestinian Fair Trade Association.

Abufarha, born near Jenin in the West Bank, was in Ireland last year to promote Zaytoun, the first olive oil product in the world to achieve Fairtrade certification.

Zaytoun is also certified organic and is produced near Abufarha's home town. �At first the farmers were skeptical,� Abufarha says, �They couldn't imagine why anyone would pay them above the market price. But they were willing to give it a try.�

In 2004 Abufarah established Canaan Fair Trade. In 2008, Canaan Fair Trade opened their new olive processing facility, on five acres of olive Courtry north of Jenin.

The facility employs 50, and commercialises the products of between 3000 and 5000 Palestinian farmers.

�Fair Trade isn't just about the price,� Abufarha says, though he acknowledges that the increase in income has been vital to many farmers in Palestine. �We have given farmers hope. An economic exchange that recognizes Palestinian farmers' rights and respects the value of their connection to their land, after years of marginalization under Israeli occupation, is a major accomplishment.�

Zaytoun organic and Fair Trade Olive Oil is available in select stores around Ireland.

organic certification, fair trade and air miles

Here's my take on the debate that's raging at the moment, on air freight and organic, which I've also briefly covered previously (Soil Association and Financial Times links available there). My own opinion of their move only really comes on in the last 2 paragraphs, where I deal with the protectionism or otherwise of the Soil Association's move. In the 2nd week of January, I'll have an article in the Examiner on the topic which gives it a specifically Irish slant: it will feature the opinion of IOFGA and an Irish organic importer and wholesaler.

The UK�s largest organic certification body, the Soil Association, has come up with an innovative but also controversial way to deal with the environmental impact of air-freighted organic food.

In a move being implemented over the next few years, air freighted organic food imported by the Soil Association will have to meet the organisations own ethical trade standards or the Fairtrade Foundation�s standards.

According to the Soil Association, �these standards apply to the whole supply chain, and require fair trading arrangements, ethical employment relationships including fair pay, and concrete social and cultural contributions to the local community or society more widely�.

This policy position comes after a large consultative process on the issues around air-freight and organic food, involving numerous participants: 100 representatives from industry, NGOs, and government were directly consulted; respectively, these organisations made 28 (industry) 24 (NGOs), and 5 (government and international agencies) submissions.

In addition, the International Trade Centre, a joint agency of the World Trade Organisation and the United Nations, commissioned research to look at the social and economic implications of the Soil Association implementing an air freight ban.

The organisation claims that they are �also looking at how we can reliably and fairly assess the full carbon footprint of all organic products and are working closely with the Carbon Trust. We want all organic products to have a minimal or even mitigating contribution to climate change. Aside from air freight, we are reviewing our standards for heated glasshouse production and actively encourage people to eat less meat.�

Air freighting organic food implicates a range of environmental and social justice issues. According to the Soil Association, �Less than 1% of organic imports come by air freight, the vast majority coming by sea, but air freight has the highest global warming potential of any form of transport. Although less than 1% of the total UK food miles, air freight is responsible for 11% of the CO2 emissions from UK food transport.

�Air freight can generate 177 times more greenhouse gas than shipping�, they suggest.

They also point out that the oil supply may have peaked, and is thus too scarce to use importing food in such a wasteful way. Also, the negative effects of climate change are likely to be felt in the poorest countries first and hardest.

Others are not convinced. Some, such as the International Institute for Environment Development (IIED) think that focusing on such a minute cause of carbon emissions is wrong-headed.

It estimates that in the UK, passenger flights account for 90 per cent of emissions from air transport, and international freight for five per cent.

It also claims that air-freighting from sub-Saharan Africa accounts for 0.1 per cent of the UK's total carbon emissions, while around 65 per cent of emissions relating to food are caused by transportation within Britain. Production methods in Africa also involve lower emissions; in the UK, the use of production techniques such as heated glasshouses increases carbon emissions.

Others again have accused the Soil Association of an ugly type of protectionism. Under the amusing title �organic movement hijacked by Greens�, the Financial Times recently suggested that �attempts to impose such conditions on international trade is dressed up as a way of helping subsistence farmers in developing countries. In practice, it will penalise some of the poorest people on earth because they cannot adopt the same employment practices as their wealthy western competitors.�

To be fair to them, the Soil Association do seem to have many of their angles covered: they claim that this step is part of a broader process of investigating the entire carbon footprint of organic food; likewise, the synergy with fair trade isn�t so much a ban of air freight as a reward for air-freight that also carries some socio-environmental benefits. So what could be called protectionism could also be called value-adding through partnership, depending on your perspective.

It is also the case that, while they are the largest UK organic certifier, they are not the only one. This limits economistic fears of a protectionist monopoly: there will still be organic air-freighted food available that involves no guarantees of improved conditions for workers, the environment or the locale from which the food is flown, if that�s what you as a consumer really want.

the socio-environmental weight of air freight

Plenty of organic news out there at the moment, including yet more research to suggest that organic food is better for you than other food....discussion on this research to follow soon....
However, I came accross an interesting perspective on the Soil Association's decision to move towards fair trade for their certified organic air freight produce. (there's more going on there too, in relation to heated glasshouses and the overall caron footprint of the produce
Has the organic sector been hyjacked by greens? Is this one of the ugly faces of protectionism, as the FT suggests? Or is it a socio-ecological synergy, a win-win situation to help consumers whilst improving the planet?