Behind the Headlines the Plight of the Moshavim

Leon Dulzin, chairman of the Jewish Agency and World Zionist Organization Executives, told the WZO Executive yesterday that he had asked the WZO’s settlement department co-chairman, Raanan Weitz, a noted expert on rural development, to prepare a comprehensive plan to help the moshavim (cooperative farm villages) solve their growing financial crisis.

Moshav spokesmen have claimed that the cooperatives are foundering because of lack of government support to help them overcome problems arising from a shrinking export market.

Some 150 moshavim of the 239 moshavim nationwide are said to be in financial difficulties and some of them, especially in the Negev region, are in danger of closing down completely. Many farmers have been threatened with legal action and possible foreclosures for failing to pay their debts. According to Yair Yakir, the registrar of Cooperative Organizations, the debts of the 239 moshavim amount to $70 million.

Pesach Grupper, Acting Agriculture Ministry, has complained that the Finance Ministry has failed to provide the necessary funds to help the faltering moshavim. The Finance Ministry has responded by saying that funds provided to the ministry are allocated by the ministry on the basis of its list of priorities.

Agriculture experts say the main problem with farm exports is the government’s slow rate of devaluation of the Shekel, which makes Israeli exports of fruits, vegetables and flowers too expensive on the European market where they once enjoyed premium prices because of quality and early marketing.

The farmers say that the “exchange rate insurance” they get from the government is not sufficient to make up for the difference between the varying rates for the dollar at home and the European currencies. Israeli farmers pay export costs in dollars and receive European currencies for their products. The gap between the two currencies has been further widened by cutbacks in government subsidies to the farmers.

The use of sophisticated agricultural technology, the traditional way which farmers throughout the world have tended to lessen their dependence on their governments, has also made the field of agriculture investment intensive, with high capital risks and low employment capacity while marginal profits continue to decline.

KIBBUTZIM ARE LESS AFFECTED

The kibbutzim are also affected by export exchange rate problems, but to a lesser degree than the moshavim and private farmers. Although originally based only on agriculture, virtually all kibbutzim today have adapted themselves to the contracting profit earnings of farming. The bulk of their income is derived from industrial enterprises they have established within each kibbutz. While they share agricultural export problems with the moshavim, the kibbutzim share industrial export problems with other industries.

In the moshavim, each individual farmer tries to extract a living from his own land and there is no industrial enterprise to fall back on to increase their profit margins. The future of the moshavim may now depend on reducing the number of moshavim, limiting overproduction and agricultural exports and engaging in what some experts refer to as a “face lift.”

But unlike the kibbutzim, where industries tend to be highly sophisticated, operated by highly motivated workers and managers who can adapt quickly to new problems as they arise, moshavim are traditionally less able to adapt to changing technologies.

According to Grupper, a “project renewal” for farmers, funded by the government, the “Jewish people,” and the Jewish Agency would alleviate the financial crunch of the moshavim. Several Agency officials have reportedly suggested that the farmers lower what is considered their high living standard in order to improve what they see as a “temporary” lack of liquidity.

The kibbutzim have never expected much help from the Likud government, which many of them oppose politic- cally and are in turn opposed by the government. The moshavim, on the other hand, are populated mostly by new immigrants who are directed toward agriculture after their arrival in Israel and have to learn the art of farming “on the spot.”

They probably also have a higher percentage of Herut and Likud supporters and have expected more from the Likud government in the form of aid and support. Their disillusionment with the government for its failure to help them is, therefore, greater than that experienced by kibbutzim which are largely Labor Party or Mapam-based.

Although Weitz has been asked to prepare a plam to help the moshavim, Dulzin noted that most of them ended their connection with the Jewish Agency years ago, when they became firmly established and were transferred to the jurisdiction of the Agriculture Ministry.