Yosef Mizrahi of Israel’s Ben-Gurion University of the Negev is a plant physiologist, not an economist. Yet Mizrahi feels that understanding the realities of the new global economy is imperative when discussing agriculture.
During a San Francisco visit, Mizrahi offered up the analogy of Israel’s citrus industry: once one of the world’s strongest, it now has fallen behind high-tech products, service equipment and flowers among Israel’s exports.
“It used to be, as recently as 25 years ago, that if you owned a citrus field, then generations of your family were set for life,” he said. “That no longer is true.”
What happened? Globalization squashed Israel’s once vibrant and famed citrus industry, he said. The Jaffa orange, world-renowned for its juiciness, has fallen prey to oranges that are cheaper to produce in other countries. An orange picker in Israel earns about $40 per day, according to Mizrahi, while the same laborer in Morocco makes about a dollar.
Because Israel’s tax rates are among the highest in the world, the cost of growing produce is pushed up even more. The professor, in a recent interview during a Northern California lecture series, maintained that farmers in the Golden State have a huge advantage over farmers in Israel.
In California, the water is subsidized by the government, so farmers only pay for the cost of pumping the water, and not the water itself. Not so in Israel, where the freshwater is scarce, non-subsidized, and therefore quite expensive.
Mizrahi, 61, knows firsthand the perils of the new economy: He spent years developing hybrid tomatoes with an especially long shelf life, only to find them out-sold by tomatoes that were much more cheaply produced in other parts of the world.
“What was I supposed to do, give up?” asked the plain-spoken Mizrahi. “That was impossible, because agriculture is one of the three biggest components to Israel’s economy, along with industry and tourism. There had to be a better way.”
Given those circumstances, Mizrahi has dedicated the better part of two decades to figuring out a method for revitalizing Israel’s increasingly moribund agricultural economy. Like oranges, standard cash crops such as wheat, corn, barley, vegetables and other citrus fruits, which have largely sustained the Jewish state over the past five decades, are faltering because they can be grown more cheaply elsewhere.
The solution could be fruits such as the marula, koubo and pittaya. If those names don’t exactly ring a bell now, then Mizrahi has succeeded. If they don’t prompt a glint of recognition in five or 10 years, Mizrahi will be considerably less enthused. The fruits are transplants of wild vegetation that Mizrahi has scoured the world for — plants he hopes will not only bolster Israel’s economy but lessen the toll on the country’s ecosystem as well.
Mizrahi has imported 4,000 wild plants from such places as Zimbabwe, Colombia, Panama and Australia. Many grow like cacti, a fact that is crucial considering Israel’s topography. Cacti, which can withstand the harsh desert climates in Israel and other parts of the Middle East, require only one-tenth the water of other plants, an invaluable asset in a region with a freshwater shortage.
The pittaya (which originates from Latin America and parts of Asia, where it is known as the “dragon pearl fruit,”) is a cactus fruit, and comes in three different varieties. The koubo, smaller in size, and originating in Africa, also is a cactus.
Although the marula, perhaps Mizrahi’s most promising fruit to date, is not a cactus, it, too, is better suited to Israel’s environment than some other crops. The marula, which looks a bit like a kumquat, can withstand water that contains salinity levels of up to 25 percent, a hardiness Mizrahi said is equaled only by the date. The marula falls to the ground before ripening, making it easy to collect and thus saving on labor costs. Loaded with vitamin C, the fruit is squeezed until it bursts, at which point the juice is sucked out with a straw. Mizrahi said the fruit would make excellent lunch-time snacks for children and a substitute for junk food.
Additionally, the fruit has other byproducts. Its seeds, known as the “King’s Nuts” in the African region where it originates, can be eaten on their own, or pressed into a product similar to olive oil. It also is the main ingredient in a tasty liqueur.
Many of the fruits also can be used for cosmetics, food services and medicine.
Mizrahi pointed out that the wild vegetation can have curative properties. Some of those powers can be chalked up to mere folklore, but in many cases, they measure up to scientific scrutiny. One example is the “sabra” cactus pear, which, in addition to being the symbol of the Israeli citizen (tough and prickly on the outside, and tender on the inside), can help relieve prostate distress.
Currently, Israel exports about 220 tons of the wild vegetation per year, mostly to Western Europe (although an American company recently made a fruit shake using the fruit).
Mizrahi is not particularly worried about the fruit becoming a staple product of other countries, however, because the combination of climate and technological know-how are prohibitive factors. According to Mizrahi’s calculations, Israel has about 50 years to transplant, grow and market the wild plants before they are mass-produced in other countries.
Mizrahi said that his ongoing research is spurred by more than scientific curiosity. It also satisfies the environmentalist in him — the part of him that honors Israel’s historic relationship to the land it was built on.
“No country has a right to exist without agriculture and green spaces,” said Mizrahi. “Israel must never lose those.”