Transfer from Arable to Orange Cultivation Double Settlers’ Number

The Colonization Department of the Palestine Zionist Executive has recently approved a plan of intensification and increase of membership for Kfar Malal, of the South Slaron block. The settlement das founded on land of the Jewish National Fund before the War, mainly on the basis of arable farming. The forty settlers were allotted 53 dunams each. After the War, dairying was introduced. Now the development of orange growing in the neighborhood has suggested a new line of progress. The allotments are to be reduced to 25 dunams, thus making room for 40 additional settlers. The new irrigation plant will enable each settler to set up an orange grove on a tract of 8½ dunams, and devote another 10 dunams to irrigated fodder.

The settlement being affiliated with the Labor Federation, the scheme has been worked out through the Agricultural Workers’ Union, which is also responsible to the Zionist Executive for the character and qualifications of the new settlers. A group of trained agricultural workers, who have long been awaiting their turn to be colonized, has been selected for this purpose, by an agreement between the Union Executive and the old settlers.

Kfar Malal is a Moshav Ovdim—a settlement with individual allotments on National Fund land, where each settler works his own farm, while sale of produce and use of heavy machinery are organized on a co-operative basis. As a rule, no wage labor is employed, the settlers contributing a certain number of spare working days to a pool on which each can draw at need.