[Fegasderty]

http://hurryupharry.org/2011/07/05/b...rs/#more-55975
Delegates from Italy, UK, Switzerland, Belgium, Netherlands, Spain, Germany and Palestine joined the French organizers for two full days of workshops aimed at strengthening the boycott campaign against the Israeli agricultural export giant.

Agrexco is Israel’s largest fresh produce exporter and European markets account for the vast majority of their sales under the brand Carmel. The Israeli government’s 50% stake in the company as well as their marketing of 60-70% of the fruit and vegetables grown in illegal Israeli settlements in the West Bank have made Agrexco a prime strategic target for the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) campaign.
However, the real picture is somewhat more complicated than that. Agrexco exports produce from all regions of Israel, grown by farmers from all ethnic backgrounds and religions. A boycott of Agrexco produce could only ever be a very blunt knife which would target Israeli farmers inside the ‘green line’ too – some of them Israeli Arabs – because, as one would expect in any liberal country, the produce is not labeled according to the religious persuasions or ethnic identification of its producer.

In 2007 the Israeli government set up a special body charged with the economic development of the Arab, Druze and Circassian minorities. One of its many aims is to expand and encourage joint business projects between Jews and Arabs. Agrexco can be seen as something of a role model for such initiatives. In addition, the Israeli Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development set aside 20 percent (five million shekels) of its investment budget for 2011 exclusively for the development of agriculture within the Arab section of the population. In 2010 government grants to the Arab agricultural sector also amounted to 5 million shekels. In the area of financial subsidies to certain branches of agriculture, the Ministry of Agriculture employs criteria of ‘positive discrimination’ towards farmers belonging to the minorities.

The amount of agricultural land belonging to the Arab sector in Israel stands at 700,000 dunams. Of this, 500,000 dunams are currently under cultivation and they comprise 13 percent of the total farmland in the country. The Ministry of Agriculture also awards grants according to geographical area (rather than ethnic identity) to encourage the production of produce destined for export. In the ‘triangle’ region of the eastern Sharon plain, 2,000 dunams of cucumbers and 1,500 dunams of strawberries are grown and in the spring of 2011, fifteen thousand tons of cucumbers were exported from this region alone.

Calls by the BDS movement to boycott Agrexco produce would therefore cause damage to the livelihoods of Israeli Arab farmers, but they would also have a detrimental effect upon many farmers in Gaza.