PARC and Al Reef, i.e. the company PARC created to market and sell the Palestinian farmers' products, are two of the partners Jord och Frihet has in the West Bank. Below follows a short interview that we at Jord och Frihet did with Saleem Abu Ghazaleh, chairman of the Fair Trade department at PARC, during our visit to Ramallah in the fall of 2015.
- Through the cooperatives, we help create a good society, says Saleem when we meet him at Al Reef's premises in Ramallah in October 2015.
Saleem Abu Ghazaleh, PARC.
- People are divided into religious and political camps, but through the cooperatives they develop in an economic context that promotes them. In that way, we believe we can help bridge differences between people. We also cannot work and develop our ecological work without working with cooperatives, it is not possible.
- Right after the olive harvest, we have a big meeting: PARC, Al Reef, PFU and a union for the cooperatives we work with, The Union of Cooperatives in Palestine. After that meeting, we do a consolidation of all our orders. We inform the farmers how big our orders are and that they can export that amount, converted into a percentage for the different cooperatives. If the amount of oil produced by the farmers in the cooperatives is not enough, we ask other farmers, who are not connected to our cooperatives, to sell. But primarily we take in from our cooperatives.
We are shown what Al Reef's control system looks like, how Al Reef can locate the oil down to each individual olive farmer, and how much the various foreign buyers ordered. We ask how the development of organic production and exports looks like and Mohammad Hmidat, quality manager at Al Reef, who has just arrived at the office, shows the numbers.
- In 2014, the organic orders made up sixty percent, says Mohammad.
Saleem says PARC is now working with two more organic cooperatives. He also says that the farmers get paid more for the organic oil, but that PARC and Al Reef also have ideological motives behind the organic production
- The farmers are starting to understand that organic is good, says Saleem. They can see a great benefit with it now. In and of itself, most of them were basically growing non-toxic before, but they didn't have the opportunity to get certified. We have put a lot of work into it.
- Our role in PARC is perhaps to inspire that development, he continues. Fair Trade, on the other hand... For me, it almost doesn't matter, the label itself, that is. We have nevertheless worked according to those principles for many years. For us, all our work is about helping farmers, giving small farmers better opportunities. But on the other hand, the forums where Fair Trade is discussed become a way for us to meet others, a way to discuss these issues.
Saleem talks about how working with the olive oil began for him.
- I bought a tank and put it in a room I rented in Al Ram and then I bought oil from the farmers. I was a volunteer at the time, going around buying oil in small plastic cans and I cut labels off the backs of pieces of cardboard and wrote: "This oil comes from such and such a farmer"... Now we have laptops and employees, we have quality developers and a five-year plan, the first ever for Palestinian olive oil!
Saleem shows a thick booklet with the text: "The National Starategy."
- We at Al Reef do not receive any money from PARC, but are completely independent now. We have fifteen full-time employees and also seasonal employees. If we get a surplus, we plow it into our business. We might be able to do some advertising, like a film or a brochure or similar.
- When I started here, I came straight from prison. You could say that I have done all my adult work here.
PARC =Palestinian Agricultural Relief Committees is one of Palestine's largest non-governmental, individual organizations. Originally, PARC developed out of the volunteer movement that was strong in Palestine in the late 1970s. By the early 1980s, PARC's work was recognized throughout the area as an important part of the resistance to Israeli occupation and the strengthening of Palestinian agriculture. In 1983, PARC officially became an organization whose stated goal was to help "protect Palestinian land from confiscation by planting and cultivating unused areas and providing vulnerable Palestinian farmers with advice and development support." From the late 1980s until today, PARC has gone through various development phases and built up the organization's capacity.
Al Reef = The commercial company PARC created in 1993. Al Reef is 100 percent owned by PARC and was created in an effort to market Palestinian agricultural products. Al Reef's vision is to create a "sustainable development for Palestine's rural areas". The company produces, advertises and markets various types of olive oil, dates, almonds, couscous, spices, olive oil soap and fresh vegetables. The goal is to strengthen the organization of farmers' and women's cooperatives to improve their social and economic situation.
PFU = Palestinian Farmers Union. PFU is a non-governmental, private organization that provides technical and organizational assistance to Palestinian farmers. The goal is to strengthen the farmers and defend their rights. PFU consists of 14 local groups, 11 in the West Bank and 3 in Gaza.