1. The olive harvest in Palestine
A resource pack for Fairtrade Fortnight
Produced at the Global Centre, Exeter Community Centre, St David’s Hill
Photographs by Paul Adrian Raymond unless otherwise stated.

2. 10 1 – The olive harvest in Palestine million:
In numbers… 10
million:
The number of olive trees in the Palestinian West Bank, which is slightly smaller than Devon.
For thousands of years, farmers in the Mediterranean have grown olives. These tiny, bitter fruits are eaten whole or pressed for oil, which is mainly used for cooking.
Most Palestinians in the West Bank (see map) have a family olive grove. Tending the trees is a shared task, and the olive harvest each Autumn involves the whole family, from schoolchildren to grandmothers.
Map:
A Palestinian family harvesting their olives

3. 2 – Picking the olives
Farmers pick their olives by hand or hit the branches of the trees with sticks to loosen the fruit. The olives collect on the tarpaulins spread across on the ground.
Some olive trees are ancient. This one is thought to be 2,000 years old, but it still produces fruit!

4. 3 – Gathering the harvest
The crop of olives can look very small, because olives are tiny fruits. In a whole season, a Palestinian family might only pick five or six sacks of olives.
But Palestinian olive oil is very good quality and even a few bottles can be worth a lot of money.
3 – Gathering the harvest
When a tree’s olives have all been picked, the farmers sort what is on the tarpaulins and throw away the leaves and twigs.
Then they gather the olives into sacks to be taken to the nearest town and pressed for oil.

5. The olive press is where the oil is extracted from the olives and collected so it can be used.
4 - At the olive press
First, the olives are tipped into the collection point…
…then a conveyor belt picks the olives up and drops them into a machine that washes them…
…while a furnace in the corner is used to boil up some water.

6. 5 – Extracting the oil
The pulp is then piped through into these machines, which separate the oil from the solids.
The olives are crushed up in this machine and mixed with hot water. This forms a thick pulp, like olive-flavoured porridge.

7. At the end of the production line, the fresh, bitter olive oil flows out into an old (clean!) bathtub.
6 – Collecting the Oil
Did you know…?
Olive oil is mostly used in food, but it can also be made into soap!
It is then piped out through the plug hole and collected in jerry cans for storage.

8. 7 – Making use of the leftovers
Nothing the olive tree provides is wasted. The crushed, dried-out remains of the olive skins and seeds come out of another part of the press as a brown powder called jiffit. It is collected in sacks and spread out to dry in the sun. Jiffit contains leftover olive oil and is a very rich fuel. People burn it in stoves to heat their houses in winter.
When the olive trees are pruned following the harvest season, the branches are collected and given to the sheep, which eat the leaves. The wood can then be burned as fuel.

9. 8 – The problem of politics
Sadly, Palestinian farmers are not always able to pick their olives. Palestinians have been at war with Israel for decades, and Israelis with machine guns and dogs often attack them and prevent them from reaching their trees.
Some trees near Israeli houses are off limits entirely, while others can only be reached once a year at harvest time. But without the constant care and attention that olive trees need, the crop from these trees is very small.
(Photo: Simi Ann Solaas)

10. …but the process of olive harvesting continues, much as it has for thousands of years.
The End