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More than half of the 45 communities attacked on October 7 were agricultural kibbutzim and moshavim in a once-arid region that now produces approximately 70 percent of the country’s vegetables, 20 percent of its fruit and six-and-a-half percent of its milk.
The Hamas attacks damaged 40,000 hectares of agricultural land and cost $500 million in lost farmer income and infrastructure damage.
Foreign nationals were also butchered and taken hostage not just because they were at the wrong place at the wrong time, but because they represented a key labour source for Israel’s agricultural sector.
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At Kibbutz Alumim alone, 22 Thais and 19 Nepalis were massacred or kidnapped, and $5 million of farming equipment and 11 hectares of greenhouses — the rough equivalent of 27 football pitches – were destroyed on October 7.
The darkest day in Israel’s history set off an exodus of foreign workers from Israel, with thousands of foreign nationals from Thailand, Nepal and Tanzania fleeing the country, leaving crops unharvested and cows unmilked across southern Israel and contributing to an acute labour shortage of more than 10,000 experienced farmworkers.
Entire farming communities were uprooted, prompting Yuval Lipkin, deputy director general of Israel’s Agriculture Ministry, to declare last November that, “Israel’s agriculture is in its biggest crisis since the establishment of Israel.”
Insurance companies don’t cover physical assets lost during war, and government assistance programmes currently in place for farmers only reimburse the depreciated value of the equipment at the time of its destruction. “If you had a tractor for four years, its depreciated value could now be $100,000 but replacing it would cost $300,000,” Abraham said.
Agriculture was Israel’s primary economic driver after 1948, and Abraham hopes that the unprecedented barbarity and destruction of October 7 provides an opportunity for much-needed infusion of philanthropy to the industry.
“When we were building the State of Israel, Jewish philanthropy focused on agriculture and everyone had a JNF blue box on their mantlepiece where the proceeds went toward planting trees and building land,” she said. “Now, we’ve come full circle and we have to put some of our philanthropy funding into this sector and help people reconnect to this land and understand the importance of agriculture to Israel’s national security.”
For the time being, many residents of Israel’s south have relocated elsewhere in central Israel, but others, like Moti Barak, the director of agriculture at Kibbutz Be’eri, are confident that the western Negev will see a rebirth as the region’s security infrastructure and agriculture are fully restored.
“Hamas came to destroy as much as they could, but little by little, we glimpse green,” Barak wrote in Sapir Journal in June. “The potatoes that we planted several weeks ago are sprouting, and we are creating new homes on the kibbutz. It won’t be through blood, sweat, and tears — we’ve had enough of that — but with love. We will rebuild Be’eri. We will regrow the fields. We will return, and we will not lose hope.”
Jonathan Harounoff is the author of the forthcoming book “Unveiled: Inside Iran’s #WomenLifeFreedom Revolt.”
