Ostrich farming rollercoaster

March 6, 2009 - 1:47 PM by · 2 Comments
Filed under: Business, Environment, Food, General, History and Culture 

Israeli ostrichWhat with mad cow disease fears, concern over the unhealthy effects of eating animal fats and reports on the environmental damage caused by cattle farms, “alternative meat” (not to be confused with “meat alternatives”) is a growth industry.

Compared to other meats, ostrich meat cooks faster, has richer flavor and contains less than half the fat that even chicken has. Hence the relatively heavy marketing efforts associated with the burgundy poultry meat, especially in England.

Here in Israel, the ostrich meat industry started to gain momentum in the Nineties, although in 2007, some new legislation was necessary in order to make it retroactively legal, when Environmental Protection Minister Gideon Ezra reclassified ostriches and crocodiles as “nurtured wildlife.”

Mike van Grevenbroek, a Dutch immigrant to Israel, and his wife Tsophia, have been farming ostriches for 27 years now in the western Negev’s Besor district. The van Grevenbroeks and their organization, called Exotic Crops, were recently profiled in depth in Ha’aretz. The farm keeps a living inventory of some 7000 ostriches currently, and its managers estimate that they export over 150 tons of meat annually – all to Europe. Soon they’ll start marketing to locals too.

Although the large birds were once an indigenous species here, they disappeared from Israel back in the Twenties. So in 1973, van Grevenbroek smuggled 50 chicks from Ethiopia:

This was no easy feat. “At the time, you weren’t allowed to take ostriches out of South Africa,” [he] explains. “The Africans knew they had a gold mine and didn’t want to share it. In those years, they were the only ones in the world who raised ostriches, primarily for feathers and the leather industry, and they didn’t want any competition. But we were already swept up in the fantasy, and felt there was no other way except to smuggle some eggs to Israel. And so one day, I put a few eggs that were almost ready to hatch in a carry-on bag – the chicks were really ready – and within a few hours we were on an African Airlines flight from Johannesburg to Tel Aviv.”

The industry endured a rocky road since then, with demand increasing in the Eighties and peaking in 2000, with 20 ostrich farms in operation in Israel, export laws changing all the time due to pressures from the kibbutz movement. But it wasn’t always about the meat – Exotic Crops only opened its slaughterhouse in the early Nineties – and even now, with ostrich meat booming in international popularity, competition has become stiff, with many firms around the world making for a crowded market.

Ostrich meat has even given new meaning to our nation’s ongoing conflict with the Iranians. But Israeli ingenuity seems to be up to the task. And another local ostrich farmer Reginald Michiels offers us many savory recipes beyond enormous sandwiches, if you’re interesting in trying it at home.

Image of an Israeli ostrich courtesy thenotbelonghereguy from Flickr under a Creative Commons license.

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Out With the Old, in With the New

November 11, 2008 - 12:34 AM by · Leave a Comment
Filed under: General 

Israel is full of villages – “k’farim,” in Hebrew. There’s Kfar Tabor, Kfar Vitkin, Kfar Shemaryahu, Kfar Habad – and my personal favorite, Kfar Saba. Most of these villages were established decades ago, usually as agricultural settlements.

And some of Israel’s many k’farim may still be largely involved in agriculture – probably the ones way up north or down south. But as the Tel Aviv-centered megalopolis expands ever outwards, and better highways and rail links bring the periphery closer to the center, many of the k’farim in the center of the country have found a new way to grow profits – with real estate, as developers buy up the old free-standing houses, many with large lots, and magically turn them into luxury apartment buildings, offices, malls, and all the other features of Israel’s increasingly urban/suburban landscape.

That’s not necessarily a bad thing, of course; people gotta live, and as crowded as Israel is, there is still plenty of open space in the Galilee, and especially the Negev. While many farms and fields in the Sharon region, for example, have been turned into homes and stores, effective Israeli methods of land reclamation has turned large parts of the Negev into flourishing farmland, with everything from vegetables to fruit to grain growing nicely.

In Israel, as in much of Europe, the city centers are the most expensive places to live, and the further out you move, the cheaper the home. But when enough people move far enough out, that location gets an “upgrade,” and turns into a city, in and of itself. And that’s what’s been happening to almost all of the small towns, the k’farim, that once surrounded Tel Aviv. The villages are still there, in name – but now many of them are big cities.
kfar111108.jpg
Living as I do in a town not too far from Kfar Saba, I’ve seen the process unfold there over the past few years. First came the mall in the middle of town; then came the new luxury buildings and homes, with real estate shooting up in value by hundreds of percent within a couple of years. Then, they built the new park, a sure sign that Kfar Saba was no longer a “k’far,” which would have its own natural open spaces. Now, the developers have moved on to the edge of town; the funky industrial zone, which really was dedicated to industry (not shopping, like in a lot of other towns), is getting a huge sandlar111109.jpgcombination office/mall space, which will take up about five big city blocks!

Thus the photos accompanying this piece: I may have come across some of the last “authentic” original agricultural-era homes in Kfar Saba. Someone still lives in the house with the sign in the top photo (there’s a satellite dish on the roof), but apparently they got an offer they couldn’t refuse, because it appears that a “luxury building” is going up on the site.

At least we’ll still have the shoemaker, (“sandlar”), whose little shack is seen in the bottom photo. This structure must have been built decades ago, but whoever owns it still has some principles, it seems – no “for sale” signs are up on this one, yet. Maybe the municipality should buy it out in order to preserve it – and let the next generation get a sample of “the way it was.”

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Olive you

October 20, 2008 - 3:56 PM by · 2 Comments
Filed under: coexistence, Food, General 

olive3.JPG Despite the historical connotation of the olive branch, olive harvesting season is often not a period of peace here. Clashes between Palestinian olive farmers and settlers in the West Bank regularly mar the olive harvest, and according to Israeli security sources, the situation is worsening.

However, my own personal olive harvest is going just fine, thanks. When we moved into our current home, we inherited a healthy olive tree that produces more and more green olives every year. It’s one of the few objects of vegetation in our yard we haven’t managed to kill.

Only problem is, even though I love olive oil, I hate olives. Fortunately the rest of my family is more Mediterranean oriented, and they love the little critters.
So for a week in October, they turn into people of the earth and climb the tree to fill bucket after bucket of the hard olives.

Once in a while, just like the Wilderness family, my wife will bottle the olives herself, with a precise recipe involving garlic, lemon vinegar and other tangy ingredients.
But she’s never been so happy with the results, saying the olives in the supermarket deli are tastier. So usually, we give away the olives that have been picked to anyone who wants them – neighbors, friends – we even stop people on the street asking them to please take these olives off our hands.

So, for at least one family, olive harvest season is still about holding forth the olive branch.
(Photo courtesy of Matan Brinn)

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , ,

 

© 2012 ISRAELITY | Site by illuminea | Sitemap