There is a fresh Palestine farm-to-table movement that is fusing old agrarian culture and new food science and technology and emerging as an economic and cultural force. Growing out of the country’s ancient agrarian history—led by the olive tree as symbol of livelihood and promise for more than a thousand years—the trend is a spin-off of a national movement toward locally grown, sustainable foods.
The movement, incrementally and cumulatively in big cities such as Ramallah, Bethlehem, and Jericho, is being spearheaded by farmers, restaurateurs, and food business entrepreneurs. The blending is specifically to blend local produce of the location—whether za’atar, olive oil, wheat, and fresh fruits—to high-order cuisine, both preserving the traditional means as well as the sustainable means. Through such a blending, what was previously low-order food is retailed higher as upmarket dishes symptomatic of the gastronomic richness of Palestine.
The movement, according to its proponents, is more than a food movement but also an earth stewardship movement and people empowerment movement. The campaign conveys the message of respecting preservation of traditional methods of farming, diversity, and practice of activities like rotation of crops and planting of native crops. Organic farming more and more has been receiving recognition as a method of bringing food production back to its place in the world of health.
Besides holding money within the community, farm-to-table culture places Palestinian cuisine back on the world stage and back onto U.S. soil. Farmer’s markets cover the ground with fruit and veggies, locally sourced as well as artisanal creations. “Farm dinners,” where consumers and farmers gather for dinner to share farm-produced food to experience the pleasure of fresh food of the region, are the epitome of the movement, inspiring openness to and acceptance of food production.
It is also situated in an expansion broader socio-political conversation. Re-vitalizing identity and re-making culture are what the majority of participants have learned to link with farm-to-table. Participants in local food systems seek to re-make self-regulation, re-make respect for heritage, and re-make food as resistance when political ground is uncertain. Every dinner, they contend, re-stores not only flavor but sense of place and earth-based cultural identity.
The Palestinian farm-to-table movement takes from global movements towards land stewardship, social justice, and sustainable food. Based on ancient knowledge, it has a new ethic—local economies, cultural continuity, and living in harmony with nature. Formed and reformed over time, it is a giant testament to the power of food as sustenance and narrative, calling human beings into relation with the earth and to themselves.
