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'Slow Food' Project Encourages Organic Palestinian Produce

The Palestinian chapter for Slow Food International is seeking to revive Palestinian agricultural identity by producing organic food, Linah Alsaafin reports.
Terraced agricultural fields are seen in Battir village, south of Jerusalem, December 12, 2012. An Israeli government environmental agency challenged the Defence Ministry in court on Wednesday over a section of the controversial West Bank wall that threatens Battir, an ancient Palestinian farming community. Gilo, an urban complex built in a part of the occupied West Bank that Israel captured in a 1967 Middle East war and later annexed to Jerusalem, is seen in the back. REUTERS/Ammar Awad (WEST BANK - Tags:

On Saturday, April 6, the monthly meeting for the burgeoning Slow Food Palestine group took place in the Palestinian Agricultural Relief Committees building in Ramallah. The meeting was attended by men and women, farmers by profession or by hobby, employees, and agricultural workers. For the next two hours, committees were designed and members assigned, short term goals were allotted, and a vigorous debate on what was meant by local organic seeds took place.

“Local seeds aren’t only Palestinian,” said one farmer from the village of Marda. “Local seeds can also mean seeds that are imported and can be replanted for the following years.”

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