Producer Profile: Riziq Abu Nasser Riziq Abu Nasser is an olive farmer from the West Bank, where many people live on less than a pound a day – below the United Nations poverty line. However, the Palestinian climate produces some of the world's finest olive oil. Nasser recently started selling his oil through Zaytoun, the first Fairtrade-registered olive oil wholesaler importing to the UK. During Fairtrade Fortnight 2009 Riziq spoke to “The process of marketing olive oil through Fairtrade has made me optimistic. In Palestine farmers have complicated problems. But, with Fairtrade, I feel that, as a farmer, there is a solution for every problem that we have,” he said. For a special presentation on the olive harvest in the Holy Land, for use by churches and places of worship over the Easter period click here

"750 Crediton school students listened with concentration to Riziq Abu Nasser, a Palestinian olive farmer who offered assemblies and teaching to each of Crediton’s schools during Fairtrade Fortnight.

He spoke of life in the occupied West Bank, his three children, olive farming, the age of his trees, and the processes of harvesting and marketing olive oil through the Fairtrade organisation Zaytoun.

Formerly his community sold olive oil to Gaza and to the Gulf States, although the price then did not even cover the cost of production. Access to these markets is now closed.

Through Fairtrade new markets in Europe have opened demanding organic oil of high quality. There has been investment in new equipment (stainless steel containers instead of recycled jerry cans) and during harvest season each day’s pickings are taken to the oil press to be cleaned and milled. The better price benefits local farmers who feel that their produce and labour is respected by those who buy it, and the social premium for the community is used for the health clinic and his children’s school. There are hopes to buy a shared tractor.

Riziq currently has 90 olive trees. Some of those inherited from his father are “Roman trees”, 2000 years old with a girth 3 meters in diameter, some he planted himself in 1986 and he has plans to plant more. It takes 15 years from seed to productivity.

He did have 110 trees but 20 were grubbed out to build a new road serving an Israeli settlement built during the last 7 years on Palestinian land. While it used to take him 40 minutes to walk to one of his fields, it now takes three hours as he has to make a detour around this Israeli settlement. While in the past it was normal for children to accompany their parents to the fields on a regular basis, now his children will not come with him because they are afraid to pass close to it. It is doubly defended both by the wall and an electric fence.

He spoke of 557 checkpoints in West Bank, (an area the size of Devon), and asked the students if they knew what a checkpoint might be. He described what it is and gave examples of what it means in every day life.

Riziq clearly likes young people. At the end of each session he spoke Arabic: counting 1-10 at Landscore, reciting a children’s story rhyme at Hayward’s, and at Queen Elizabeth College, he sang a Palestinian song which was greeted with spontaneous and heartfelt applause from 540 11-13 year olds in a packed assembly. As we left, there were taps on the windows, goodbye waves, and cheers for him".

FOR MORE... Click here for a newsletter about Riziq Abu Nasser and olive farming in the West Bank.