The future of family farming in Israel: the second generation in the Moshav.

Introduction

In the last few decades the rural space in Israel and its socio-economic components have steadily changed. The changes are attributed to long-term trends and processes common to many developed economies, such as a tremendous increase in the efficiency and intensity of production, the decline of agricultural employment, and the suburbanization of the countryside. The Moshav, a type of family farm-based settlement, has been a prime example of these changes. The transformation of the occupation pattern in farming households, through the adoption of a strategy of pluriactivity based on both agricultural and non-agricultural sources of income, has become a common development. The decline in agricultural employment has been partly compensated for by the penetration of non-agricultural land uses and increased commuting to urban centres of employment. At the same time, movement of people from urban areas to the Moshav, partly motivated by the relaxation of land policies, has brought about major changes in the demographic composition of rural areas and the settlement patterns themselves.

The currently evolving occupational structure of the Moshav communities, especially among the second-generation households, raises questions about their future as agricultural settlements. By second generation, we mean the relatively younger households in the Moshav, in which the head of the household is no more than 40 years old. In most cases, their parents were settled in the Moshav by national authorities; in some cases, their grandparents were the first to be settled on the land, and operated a family farm. This group has shown a greater tendency to disassociate itself from agriculture in favour of non-agricultural income-generating activities, both inside and outside the settlement. Bearing that in mind, this paper has two major aims: to identify major patterns of economic activity and income sources among second-generation Moshav households; and to assess their future attitudes towards farming activities and choosing pluriactivity as a livelihood strategy. Before discussing the major issues of this paper, some theoretical background regarding rural occupational change and pluriactivity, in general, and the nature of the Moshav and the changes it has undergone in recent years, in particular, is reviewed.

Farm diversification and pluriactivity

The analysis of occupational changes in the rural areas of developed economies emphasizes, among other processes, the diversification of income sources among farming households. This diversification may be the result of developing new activities within the farm, or the combination of farm-based and external sources of income. Both patterns represent the emergence of pluriactivity as a common strategy for farmers to reduce their reliance on agricultural production as the major source of income. Diversification, and more broadly, pluriactivity, as well as the underlying reasons for choosing this strategy, have long been discussed in the literature (Ilbery 1987; Gasson 1988; Fuller 1990; McInerney and Turner 1991; Evans and Ilbery 1993; Grossman 1993; Marsden 1998; Bryden and Bollman 2000; McNally 2001; Sofer 2001). A synthesis of these sources proposes that the main causes of this trend are the following.

1 Deteriorating terms of trade for the agricultural sector, expressed in the rising cost of inputs and the relative fall in the price of outputs, a process culminating in declining net income from agriculture.

2 Increased efficiency of the agricultural sector and productivity per unit of input, resulting in reduced demand for labour, coupled with burgeoning food surpluses.