A demand for a fund of 350, 000, 000 pounds ($196,000,000) for an extensive countrywide agricultural settlement program, was made here last night by Abraham Harzfeld, addressing the opening session of the ninth conference of the Histadrat Agricultural Workers Association. The purpose of the fund, the veteran settlement expert said, would be to consolidate new settlements, extend conscription by adding a year of agricultural service and establish new settlements in Galilee and the southern Negev.
Minister of Agriculture Moshe Dayan told the more than 500 delegates to the conference that there were four problems facing Israeli formers today: scarcity of water, which is becoming more serious with the continued agricultural development; increasing agricultural exports; profitability, and improving and maintaining the economic standard of the agricultural worker.
Mr. Harzfeld, in asking for the establishment of the settlement fund, warned that delay in consolidating settlements established in the past ten years would be costly. He criticized the duplication in settlement activity among the various kibbutz trends and suggested that it was “not good for agriculture” that Finance Minister Levi Eshkol was also head of the Jewish Agency’s settlement department, since the latter post, he said, was a full-time job.
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