There are few countries more remote from Israel than the South Pacific island nations of the Solomon Islands and Papua New Guinea. But more than a dozen islanders with college degrees are among the 850 foreign students currently studying agriculture in the Arava, the arid desert region along the southern Israeli-Jordanian border. And though the war in Gaza broke out shortly after their arrival, most of the students have stayed.
“When the war first broke out, my parents were in Jerusalem on an organized church tour. They said I should return home with them because there was a war. They were shocked that I decided to stay,” relates Enoch Siria, from Papua New Guinea. Their embassy tried to persuade their nationals to return, but they all decided to remain.
The students are taking part in the 11-month Arava International Center for Agricultural Training program (AICAT), one of five agricultural internships in the country, which combine practical, hands-on training (“learning by doing”) with advanced academic studies. Some 4,000 students from developing countries in Asia and Africa take part annually in five programs, overseen by MASHAV, the Foreign Ministry’s Agency for International Development Cooperation. The students do paid work on farms five days a week and spend one day a week studying. The field work includes dairy farming, orchard and field crops, poultry and livestock raising, and aquaculture.
AICAT in the Arava was the first of the programs, launched 30 years ago by Hanni Arnon, today director of external relations. “Our aim is to provide the students with the tools to see their world a bit differently,” she says. “They see the desert, with no natural resources, and can’t understand how we can exist with almost no rainfall. They learn how we overcome challenges and odds.”
Today, in partnership with the Jewish National Fund-USA, AICAT provides professional agricultural training annually to over 850 students from 14 countries in Asia, Africa, and the South Pacific islands. They include Thailand, Vietnam, Cambodia, East Timor, Kenya, Azerbaijan, Tanzania, Liberia, Laos, Fiji, Papua New Guinea, the Solomon Islands, and even Indonesia, a country that doesn’t have diplomatic relations with Israel.
The students pay their own tuition, approximately $3,000, and pay for their flight. The farmers arrange medical insurance, provide housing, and pay salaries. There are no dormitories; the students live with the farmers, who become their mentors. This, says Arnon, is the advantage of the program in the Arava. “The issue of community here is very strong. The students aren’t isolated in cities but are adopted by the families. It gives a different feeling, and their contacts remain after they leave.”
The physical field work the students carry out is similar to that done by foreign workers, and they earn the same salary. But the students receive training in the field, as well as theoretical coursework on the campus in Sapir, the seat of the regional council. The students also have professional tours (such as plant protection and aquaculture) and trips to some of the main tourist attractions around the country.
“We thought the work schedule would be totally different, that we would just come and learn, without knowing that we would also work in the farms,” says Siria, “But we adjusted quickly. All of us are now working and learning, especially since we know that Israel is the leader in agriculture, and we’ll go back home with much knowledge.”
The students generally remain in the same agricultural branch where they’re initially placed. “As farmers, we see working in the fields as an important part of the training,” explains AICAT director Dafna Gomershtat. “We want the students to experience a full season, from planting to harvest to the production line. This is a process.”
The academic courses include plant biology, soil protection, biotechnology, aqua-culture, livestock management, marketing, financial analysis, research methodology, entrepreneurship, and business plans.
All students in the program are required to conduct research projects, usually proposed by the farmer working with them, and guided by a professional supervisor appointed by AICAT. Some of last year’s projects dealt with comparing the yield of different methods of cultivating peppers, basil, and watermelon.
Many of the students are aspiring entrepreneurs and develop plans for projects when they return home. Dedicated grants of up to $10,000, funded by The Dean Family Fellowship in cooperation with the JNF-USA, are awarded at the end of the year to graduates “who present plans that improve the lives of their community in their home countries.” Past grants were awarded for a plan in Cambodia to erect a machine to dry out rice that can be stored, and in Gambia for a machine to conserve slaughtered chickens.
“THE PROGRAM gives us a chance to get experience in agriculture, which is far better than what we have at home,” says Joselyne Wairimu from Kenya. “We learn by doing. The program is very practical, and it also improves one’s discipline. You have to wake up and go to work; it gives us motivation.”
Her comment about getting up in the morning, said half in jest, is echoed by Jethro Songan from Papua New Guinea, whose group arrived in September. “When we first came, we struggled with what it means to be exactly on time; the first morning, we missed the tractor taking us to work,” he admits. “We’re slowly shifting our mindsets. Even interacting with each other in our working environment, living with the farmers, learning what to do, what not to do. This is the most important thing we are going to take back to our country.” Songan says he’s impressed by the fact that the Israeli farmers themselves work just as hard as everyone else in the field.
About 35 percent of the students in the AICAT course are women. Selina Sanga and Brenda Rubulegu from the Solomon Islands say they understood that they would be expected to do physical labor but point out that “women back home are used to this.” They’re working in the date plantations, both in the field and in the packing house. There are no dates in the Solomon Islands, but when they return home they’d like to set up a honey farm together.
Effect of war
This year’s AICAT students had been in the country for only a month when the war with Hamas broke out on October 7. Most of the students remained.
“The families were, of course, very worried about the war,” explains Joel Mwangi from Kenya. “They’re dependent on the media, which doesn’t always reflect what is happening on the ground. We assured them we were safe in this area.”
The Arava is the region that is farthest from the fighting. Nevertheless, all students and workers from Thailand and Fiji who were in Israel, including the Arava, were obliged by their governments to leave the country.
As was true in the rest of Israel, all the farms in the Arava were dramatically impacted by the sudden major shortage of workers, precisely at the beginning of the agricultural season. As everywhere in the country, local Israeli residents immediately volunteered to help the farmers. They were soon joined by the foreign interns, who pitched in to help. “This was significant; they aren’t fully trained, but they’re still helpful on the farms,” relates Noa Zer, resource development director of Central Arava. “With the acute lack of workers, the fact that they were already in the field meant they were very important to the survival of the farms. It was an interesting experience for them of how to manage the farm in a time of crisis,” she added.
Of the 100,000 Israelis evacuated from their homes in the communities next to Gaza in the ongoing war, 2,500 were sent to the Arava. Every moshav, every vacation home accommodated them. The AICAT interns also collected food and clothing for the displaced Israelis. “This is also our tradition,” they said.
UNDETERRED BY the war, in December an additional group of 100 students from Kenya arrived to join the AICAT program. Several Kenyans who completed the course last year returned for a second year as group leaders. “In the last course, we got hands-on experience in the field and got to understand the culture. Now we’ve returned as leaders to look after the new students, explains Mwangi, who has a degree in agri-business management. “I’m sort of a big brother.”
He says the new students understood they would be required to work in the fields. “At home, we work very hard on our farms but we don’t get paid; here we get paid,” he points out. The students’ main challenge, he says, is adjusting to the local weather, which is very different from that in Kenya.
“I decided to come back because of the social aspect – the interaction not only with the Jewish people in the country but also with the new Kenyan students coming for the program,” says fellow second-year Kenyan group leader Jesse Mutunde, who has a degree in regional planning. As a Christian, being in the Holy Land is meaningful, he says, but also “getting the tools to start businesses ourselves in agriculture when we leave. The economic aspect is empowering: the knowledge we get from here, we can implement when we leave.”
Mwangi and Mutunde plan to set up their own tomato farm when they return to Kenya.
AICAT administrators point out that often initiatives and projects in developing countries fail because they are set up by instructors from Western countries. “They install the technology and the ideas; but when they leave, the local people don’t know how to maintain it,” contends director Dafna Gomershtat. “But in AICAT, the aim is to teach the students to do it themselves when they go back; they will know how to provide the work going on. It’s a change of mindset.”
After 10 Nepalese students in the Sdot Negev internship program were murdered in the October 7 Hamas attack while working on a kibbutz in the Gaza envelope, the Nepalese government insisted that all Nepalese leave the country. But nearly all the students from all the countries in the five agricultural internship programs stayed on, despite the war. Students in the North and the South were relocated to other training centers and farms.
“Everyone who wanted to leave, left. Every student who didn’t feel safe left, but most chose to stay,” says Tamar Yarden, head of the Internship in Agriculture Administration in the Foreign Ministry.
Which countries can be considered for their citizens joining the agricultural internship programs is determined by the Foreign Ministry. “It’s a very complex calculation because we need to consider our long-term and short-term interests,” explains Yarden. Political considerations are important, she says. All the countries, after all, are members of the United Nations, “but let’s say that a certain country is currently a member of the UN Security Council. Obviously, we’ll look at these countries favorably,” she says. On the other hand, any country employing “negative incentives” such as financial pressures or engaging in any sort of human trafficking is ineligible, she stresses.
“These are all developing countries,” Yarden continues. “If it’s a country that provides positive incentives, like giving grants or land, or hiring the students for jobs in private or public sector after they go back, we know that this country is worth investing in. Later, these graduates are going to use their knowledge from these courses and will really make a change.”
A few years ago, complaints of exploitation of some interns in one of the programs were publicized in the Israeli press. According to the Foreign Ministry’s Yarden, the issues were successfully dealt with once the programs were transferred to MASHAV. “We learned a lot from complaints in the past; it helped us a great deal to know what to look for,” she explains. “We monitor all the programs, to ensure that the students receive at least the minimum wage, the level of the studies, proper medical assistance, whether they feel comfortable with the farmers – the whole cycle.”
The fact that there are far more applicants for the internships in dozens of countries than can be accommodated attests to the programs’ success and reputation. “Everyone who returns home after completing the program is an ambassador,” states AICAT founder Arnon. “They live with us, learn our culture and politics. What Israel does to benefit developing countries is good for the state. It’s what we call ‘agrodiplomacy.’”■