Nadene Goldfoot
Dedicated to my son, Steve.
Why does it matter about how mankind plants their crops? What have farmers learned? Why does it matter? Different plants have different nutritional needs and are susceptible to different pathogens and pests. If a farmer plants the exact same crop in the same place every year, as is common in conventional farming, she continually draws the same nutrients out of the soil.
If the same crop is grown continuously, the plant drains the same nutrients from the soil every year. This eventually leads to nutrient depletion and soil infertility. A farmer can, at his own risk, grow the same crop for several years in a row, as he saw that this field provides a good yield.
Moses came along and turned off lots of people with laws about how to plant and how to harvest. It didn't make sense to people 3,332years ago but it does now. Moses was born in about 1391 BCE. These laws were from G-d.
Every 7th year is a Sabbath year, called the Shmita year. The land is to lie fallow. It is not to be planted. It is the sabbath for the land. This is an over 3,000 rule for letting land replenish. Why didn't people know that in the early 1900's in the USA? They wouldn't have had a Dust Bowl out of their land.
According to the Mosaic law, grains, fruits, legumes and vegetables are permitted to be eaten in the Seventh Year, yet must they be harvested in an irregular fashion, and only as much as a person might need for his sustenance, without the necessity of hoarding the fruits in granaries and storehouses.
Shmita is the seventh year of the seven-year agricultural cycle mandated by the Torah for the Bet HaMikdash in the Land of Israel and is observed in contemporary Judaism.
During shmita, the land is left to lie fallow and all agricultural activity, including plowing, planting, pruning and harvesting, is forbidden by halakha (Jewish law). Other cultivation techniques (such as watering, fertilizing, weeding, spraying, trimming and mowing) may be performed as a preventive measure only, not to improve the growth of trees or other plants (during this year). Additionally, any fruits or herbs which grow of their own accord and where no watch is kept over them are deemed hefker (ownerless) and may be picked by anyone. A variety of laws also apply to the sale, consumption and disposal of shmita produce. All debts, except those of foreigners, were to be remitted.
Chapter 25 of the Book of Leviticus promises bountiful harvests to those who observe the shmita, and describes its observance as a test of religious faith. There is little notice of the observance of this year in biblical history and it appears to have been much neglected.
The next Shmita year is 2021-2022 which is the year (5782) of the Jewish calendar.
According to the laws of shmita, land owned by Jews in the Land of Israel is left unfarmed. The law does not apply to land in the Diaspora. Any naturally growing produce was not to be formally harvested, but could have been eaten by its owners, as well as left to be taken by poor people, passing strangers, and beasts of the field. While naturally growing produce such as grapes growing on existing vines can be harvested, it cannot be sold or used for commercial purposes; it must be given away or consumed. Personal debts are considered forgiven at sunset on 29 Elul. Since this aspect of shmita is not dependent on the land, it applies to Jews both in Israel and elsewhere.
As produce grown on land in Israel owned by Jewish farmers cannot be sold or consumed, fruits and vegetables sold in a shmita year may be derived from five sources:
- Produce grown during the sixth year, to which the laws of the seventh year do not apply.
- Produce grown on land owned by non-Jewish (typically, Arab) farmers in Israel.
- Produce grown on land outside the halakhic boundaries of Israel (chutz la'aretz).
- Produce (mainly fruits) distributed through the otzar beit din.
- Produce grown in greenhouses.
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- More than forty types of fruit are grown in Israel.
- In addition to citrus, these include avocados, bananas, apples, cherries, plums, nectarines, grapes, dates, strawberries, prickly pear (tzabbar), persimmon, loquat and pomegranates.
There is a requirement that shevi'it produce be consumed for personal use and cannot be sold or put in trash. For this reason, there are various special rules regarding the religious use of products that are normally made from agricultural produce. Some authorities hold that Hanukkah candles cannot be made from shevi'it oils because the light of Hanukkah candles is not supposed to be used for personal use, while Shabbat candles can be because their light can be used for personal use. For similar reasons, some authorities hold that if the Havdalah ceremony is performed using wine made from shevi'it grapes, the cup should be drunk completely and the candle should not be dipped into the wine to extinguish the flame as is normally done.
The otzar beit din system is structured in such a way that biur remains the responsibility of members of individual households and hence warehoused produce does not have to be moved to a public place or reclaimed at the biur time. Households only have to perform biur on produce they receive before the biur time, not on produce they receive after it.
Because the Orthodox rules of Kashrut have strictures requiring certain products, such as wine, to be produced by Jews, the leniency of selling one's land to non-Jews is unavailable for these products, since these strictures would render the wine non-Kosher. Accordingly, wine made from grapes grown in the land of Israel during the Shmita year is subject to the full strictures of Shmita. New vines cannot be planted. Although grapes from existing vines can be harvested, they and their products cannot be sold.
While obligatory to the Orthodox as a matter of religious observance, observance of the rules of Shmita is voluntary so far as the civil government is concerned in the contemporary State of Israel. Civil courts do not enforce the rules. A debt would be transferred to a religious court for a document of prosbul only if both parties voluntarily agreed to do so. Many non-religious Israeli Jews do not observe these rules, although some non-religious farmers participate in the symbolic sale of land to non-Jews to permit their produce to be considered kosher and sellable to Orthodox Jews who permit the leniency. Despite this, during Shmita, crop yields in Israel fall short of requirements so importation is employed from abroad.
Once the Jewish people came to the Land of Israel, all fruits grown on newly planted trees could not be consumed, sold, gifted, or used for any form of pleasure for the first three years. At the conclusion of the third year, the fruits are considered holy and can only be consumed in Yerushalayim/Jerusalem.
Needing an expert opinion, I turned to those more knowledgeable than I. The conclusion was that it was kosher, for several reasons: Some trees must be older than three years, which means that every individual fruit may very well not be from a non orlah tree, which is sufficient to permit it outside of Israel. In fact quality, commercial-grade fruit are always beyond the orlah stage. Also, grafting a stem onto a rootstock of the same species is permitted and doesn’t usually affect the orlah count since we generally follow the age of the rootstock (unless the rootstock was extremely short).
The apple orchards in Israel cover an area of 4.2 thousand hectares, and 95% of the fruit is grown along the northern border, in the Galilee and the north of Israel. When there are fruit surpluses the apples grown in the orchards belonging to the Druze farmers are transferred to the Syrian market. This success in the north was explained by the reduction of 25% in the irrigation water and thinning out the small fruit following the guidelines issued by the researchers at the Northern Research and Development center, to attain an optimal fruit load on the trees. Furthermore, this summer's prevailing temperatures were relatively low, a factor which helped impart the fruit with its fine purple color in the colored apple varieties.Nov 9, 2014
It’s Erev Rosh Hashanah and the table is set beautifully, with the tray of apples and honey prominently in the center. Of course, everyone has their personal favorite type of apple – the Gala, the Honey Crisp, the famous Red Delicious… But, there is a new variety of apple on the market that has taken the United States by storm with its instant popularity. The Cosmic Crisp (scientific name WA-38) is an apple with dark red skin, like the color of wine, creamy white flesh, a pleasant flavor and an extended shelf life. It is so dense that the apple feels heavy when held.
Like all apples, the Cosmic Crisp consumes oxygen through what the consumer might think of as spots or freckles, but which are really tiny pores in the skin, called lenticels. The Cosmic Crisp apple’s lenticels look exceptionally bright against its inky skin, reminiscent of stars in the night sky, an observation that was branded into the trademarked “Cosmic Crisp” name.
The apple tested so well that Washington State University (where the variety was developed), in collaboration with commercial nurseries, began producing apple saplings as fast as possible; the plan was to start with 300,000 trees, but growers requested 4 million, leading to a lottery for divvying up the first available trees. Within three years, the industry had planted 13 million Cosmic Crisp trees.
The variety was first planted for commercial use in Spring 2017, with 12 million trees
pre-ordered by Washington orchards. Cosmic Crisp apple trees were initially only available to Washington-based growers, and will remain limited to them for at least ten years.
Once the Jewish people came to the Land of Israel, all fruits grown on newly planted trees could not be consumed, sold, gifted, or used for any form of pleasure for the first three years. At the conclusion of the third year, the fruits are considered holy and can only be consumed in Yerushalayim. Only at the beginning of the fifth year are the fruits considered “mundane” and can be sold and consumed in a regular manner.The Torah only speaks explicitly about fruits that grow in the Land of Israel, but the prohibition against orlah fruits includes those which grow outside of Eretz Yisroel , as well. The source of this prohibition isn’t learned plainly from the Torah, rather it’s a law passed down from generation to generation beginning with Moshe Rabbeinu – Halacha l’Moshe miSinai.
Jews have a holiday for trees. Tu BiShvat (Hebrew: ט״ו בשבט; tú bish'vat) is a Jewish holiday occurring on the 15th day of the Hebrew month of Shevat (in 2021, Tu BiShvat begins at sunset on January 27 and ends in the evening of January 28). It is also called Rosh HaShanah La'Ilanot (Hebrew: ראש השנה לאילנות), literally 'New Year of the Trees'. Of course, it is celebrated by planting a tree. How far back does this holiday go? The rabbis ruled in favor of Hillel on this issue and the 15th of Shevat became the date for calculating the beginning of the agricultural cycle for the purpose of biblical tithes, Hillel goes back to the 1st century BCE.
Agriculture in Israel is a highly developed industry. Israel is a major exporter of fresh produce and a world-leader in agricultural technologies despite the fact that the geography of the country is not naturally conducive to agriculture. More than half of the land area is desert, and the climate and lack of water resources do not favor farming. Only 20% of the land area is naturally arable. In 2008 agriculture represented 2.5% of total GDP and 3.6% of exports. While farmworkers made up only 3.7% of the work force, Israel produced 95% of its own food requirements, supplementing this with imports of grain, oilseeds, meat, coffee, cocoa and sugar.
"Israel is home to two unique types of agricultural communities, the kibbutz and moshav, which developed as Jews from all over the world made aliyah to the country and embarked on rural settlement."That's pretty good for a people who were kept from owning land ever
since 70 CE. They were kept from becoming farmers.
It amazes me that our ancestors so very long ago had access to this knowledge. Yet it took today's civilization a long time to realize these same benefits such as crop rotation or having a fallow season. People in Sweden centuries ago were eating bark off of trees for lack of food whose people were either just Vikings and didn't do farming or just plain didn't know about such facts.
Why have so many laws been added to plain old conservation facts? Don't ask me; ask G-d. Maybe we'll find out in the future, 3,000 years from today. To me, it is part of a plan to condition us to be very aware of these conservation laws and carry them out. We'd follow them more so by being so aware of all that goes with them. It's a mind-set thing.
Resource:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shmita#:~:text=According%20to%20the%20Mosaic%20law,fruits%20in%20granaries%20and%20storehouses.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tu_BiShvat#:~:text=Tu%20BiShvat%20(Hebrew%3A%20%D7%98%D7%B4,New%20Year%20of%20the%20Trees'.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agriculture_in_Israel
https://www.ok.org/article/first-fruits-overview-laws-orlah/#:~:text=Once%20the%20Jewish%20people%20came,only%20be%20consumed%20in%20Yerushalayim.
https://www.israeltrees.org/news/?a=yw-adgrant-blessing&gclid=Cj0KCQjwktKFBhCkARIsAJeDT0jtWELgaQA0C5aEdxU09RfRbBfrA4tfVz-Sk4W6CX06JUHdH5jgo40aAsQTEALw_wcB
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tu_BiShvat#:~:text=Tu%20BiShvat%20(Hebrew%3A%20%D7%98%D7%B4,New%20Year%20of%20the%20Trees'.
https://institute.global/advisory/how-israel-transformed-its-agriculture-sector-five-insights-africa
https://www.ok.org/article/first-fruits-overview-laws-orlah/#:~:text=Once%20the%20Jewish%20people%20came,only%20be%20consumed%20in%20Yerushalayim.
https://www.chabad.org/library/article_cdo/aid/4621697/jewish/Is-the-Cosmic-Crisp-Apple-Kosher.htm
