MOSHAV AMI'OZ, Israel—The Oct. 7, 2023, attack and the ensuing war have cost Asher Tamsut a fortune. Still, he’s less interested in talking about his fallow fields and lost agricultural production than he is in delineating the war’s true cost to him: his family’s peace of mind.
His wife and three children, two daughters and a son, fled their home after Hamas’s attack, which killed 1,200 Israelis, saw 240 more taken hostage, wounded thousands more, and forced hundreds of thousands of people from their homes.
On Oct. 8, 2023, they went to Israel’s southernmost city, Eilat, while Mr. Tamsut stayed to work. Later, they moved closer to home to Beersheba, the largest city in the Negev Desert.
But they now sleep with the lights on, he told The Epoch Times through a translator.
“They’re not willing to hear about coming home, not now, anyhow,” Mr. Tamsut said. “They’re emotionally wounded. They’re afraid of everything. They don’t go out of the house.”
Although the area has become reasonably safe, the sounds of war are too frightening now. During Mr. Tamsut’s interview in early March, artillery was audible. It was outgoing, fired by the Israelis.
Moshav Ohad, where they live, was not attacked. However, Hamas attacked Moshav Mivtahim next door, where his parents live. Three members of its security team were killed right next to his parents’ home, and the house next door was attacked, Mr. Tamsut said.
His fields in the two moshavs—small agricultural communities featuring private farms—plus this one, Moshav Ami'oz, all nearby each other, were not attacked either.
This field is only four kilometers (2.5 miles) from the Egyptian border and seven kilometers (4.3 miles) from Rafah, where Israeli troops were already amassing in March for a final offensive against Hamas. These communities are among the southernmost in Israel’s Western Negev agricultural zone and furthest from its population centers. South of them is mostly desert.
Having spoken about how the Oct. 7 attack has affected his family, Mr. Tamsut was then willing to talk about what the war has cost him as a farmer and what it’s costing Israel in lost food production.
He was standing in a large greenhouse, one of about 25 dunams (about 6 acres). That’s half as large as the average Walmart Supercenter. The sunny property is full of wilting, ragged tomato plants. Mr. Tamsut’s 40 Thai laborers mostly left when the war broke out, and the four or five who remained haven’t been enough.
This greenhouse—only part of his fields, which in three different moshavs total about 250 dunams (about 60 acres), a large holding by Israeli standards—produces 250 tons of tomatoes in a typical harvest. This winter, in a crop he planted 10 days before Oct. 7, he has only been able to harvest about three tons.
He has lost more than 6 million Israeli shekels, about $1.6 million, so far, he told The Epoch Times.
The entire Israeli agricultural sector shares Mr. Tamsut’s problem. It has been hampered not only by the departure of foreign workers after the attack but also by farmers who serve in the Israel Defense Forces reserve forces being called up. Volunteers have jumped in to help—translator David Eisenstadt had volunteered to pick eggplants for Mr. Tamsut—but it’s not nearly enough.
And fields such as his, so far away from Israel’s population centers, haven’t been able to draw as many volunteers as those closer to large cities such as Tel Aviv and Jerusalem.
Before the war, Israel employed nearly 30,000 foreign agricultural workers, the majority of whom were from Thailand. About 10,000, not just those working in combat zones, returned to their homeland when the war started. Another 10,000 to 12,000 Palestinian farmworkers from Gaza and the West Bank are barred from entering Israel.
“The immediate and unexpected loss of farm labor implied a threat to food security in both the short and medium ranges,” professor Ayal Kimhi of Hebrew University and Shoresh Institution for Socioeconomic Research told The Epoch Times in an email.
The problem was worsened by the loss of farmland, infrastructure, farm buildings, equipment, and livestock, as well as the farm workers murdered, wounded, or kidnapped, he said in a study just published in the journal Foods.
He predicted that the food supply would decline in the months ahead, partly because farmers like Mr. Tamsut may hesitate to replant, given the labor shortage. But farmers who don’t replant may later find it financially difficult to do so, Mr. Kimhi said.
The small but fertile agricultural area near Gaza—five regional councils bordering it, like rural townships or counties, each containing multiple smaller communities—accounts for a quarter of Israel’s farm production, he said.
That includes most of its potatoes; 10 percent of its fruit, including nearly 60 percent of its lemons; and almost half of its tomatoes and cabbages. Ministry of Agriculture estimates in December 2023 showed Israel losing 30 percent of its tomato production, 25 percent of lettuce, 20 percent of cabbage, 20 percent of onion, and 10 percent of cucumber, he said.
The war has similarly affected farming in the north, which has been under sustained rocket attack by Hezbollah since Oct. 7, causing tens of thousands of people to flee. Mr. Kimhi said the price of chicken, mostly produced in the north, has gone up since Oct. 7 but that he did not have precise figures.
The government has upped efforts to bring in more foreign workers from nations such as India, Sri Lanka, and Malawi. It’s paying bonuses for those willing to work near Gaza or Lebanon and temporarily lifted a five-year stay limit for foreign workers.
In a normal year, none of Mr. Tamsut’s tomato plants would have been visible during his March interview. They would have been harvested and cleared out, the field readied for a new planting. The plants, supported by wires, get as tall as 15 feet. Mr. Tamsut would normally do three plantings of tomatoes per year, interspersed with crops such as cucumber, eggplant, and cauliflower to keep down insect infestations.
But he hasn’t had the labor to clear the field out, as he didn’t have the labor to properly maintain the field. These tomato plants were topped, not allowed to grow to 15 feet, as he knew he wouldn’t be able to handle that much harvest anyway. Less height also made it easier for what workers he has been able to muster—about a half dozen had returned by early March—to work them.
He’s pessimistic about replanting, he said. He does not want to waste money and energy putting in more of a crop than he can care for and harvest.
