Arava farmers longing for the Thais that bind - and harvest

Farmers in the Arava Desert say they are discarding dozens of tons of fresh produce every day - mainly peppers, melons and cherry tomatoes - due to a lack of workers to harvest them. According to Haim Havlin, head of the Agricultural Committee of the Central Arava Valley, the farmers are losing a total of NIS 50 million from lost exports, while Israel's GDP as a whole is losing NIS 150 million.

When the Interior Ministry froze entry permits for Thai workers, it said it would supply Israeli workers to replace them but has not made good on that promise, Havlin said. The few Israelis who did show up refused to work picking in the greenhouses, agreeing only to work in the packing houses, he said.

The farmers don't want to sell the produce on the local market, because this would depress prices in Israel to the point of unprofitability, Havlin said.

The situation is particularly difficult for young farmers from the center of the country who recently moved to the Arava and now find themselves deep in debt. These families received land and water allocations from the state to create farms with 45 dunams (about 11 acres) under cultivation to grow peppers for export.

Rotem Hasson and her husband took out an NIS 1.5 million bank loan for their new pepper farm, but have been unable to maintain it because the five licensed workers from Thailand they had arranged for never arrived as a result of the freeze on entry permits.

"We've reached financial, emotional and physical collapse due to our debts, and we have no more [funding] sources to keep us going," Hasson said.

Many of the young farmers are planning to leave the Arava - either returning to the center of the country or moving to the West Bank, where they say they have been promised better conditions.

The labor problems are compounded by last month's heavy rainstorms, which caused significant crop damage in the south of the country.