Press reports in Israel suggest that the country’s citrus industry is ready for a return to its heyday of the 1980s.
According to Tal Amit of the citrus department of the Israeli Fruit & Vegetable board who was quoted in national daily Yediot Aharonot, the authorities are prepared to invest substantial sums in the plantation of “tens of thousands” of trees of different citrus types, to boost exports.
At the end of the 1980s, Israel had 40,000 hectares under citrus and exported around 1.5 million tonnes a year. By 2002, there were just 17,000ha of groves left.
But now the board hopes to see exports climb back to 800,000t of various types and sizes of grapefruit, easy peelers and oranges.
This year an additional 850ha have been planted and next year the total acreage should rise to 20,000ha. Israeli export authorities forecast a 15 per cent rise in export volume to 160,000t.
Last season, the value of citrus exports rose by 10 per cent to €30 million (£20.2m), but Israel still faces problems with a shortage of labour. In the 1990s as the construction boom took off, workers were diverted to that industry. And in this decade, the shortage is due to several thousand Palestinian fruit pickers still being banned from picking in Israeli groves due to security concerns.
Israel has also faced growing competition from other Mediterranean basin sources such as Morocco, Turkey and Spain.
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