The history of agriculture in Palestine dates back to 8000 BCE and some of the earliest agricultural settlements in the world. Several of the crops grown by the earliest farmers continued to be important throughout the long history of Palestinian agriculture. In the 19th century CE the Ottoman Empire discouraged, with limited success, the long-standing communal land system called musha'a practiced by the Palestinian Arab farmers living in the highlands. Wheat and barley were their most important crops and were grown primarily for subsistence rather than the commercial market. Olives are an important traditional crop. In the late 19th century Palestinians began to grow commercial and export crops such as citrus in the lowlands near the Mediterranean Sea coast. Large landowners, both resident and non-resident, owned a large part of the land, especially near the coast.
In 1882, Jewish immigrants, with financing and technical assistance from abroad, began to purchase land and establish agricultural settlements in the coastal area of the Holy Land. Jewish farmers focused on producing commercial and export crops such as vegetables and citrus. By 1941, Jews owned 24.5 percent of the cultivated land in Palestine. Most Palestinians continued to live in the highlands and practice subsistence agriculture.
The partition of Palestine into the country of Israel and the Palestinian territories in 1947–1948 resulted in a war in which most Palestinian farmers living in Israel were dispossessed of their land which was subsequently farmed by Israelis. More land farmed by Palestinians in the Palestinian territories (and subsequent State of Palestine) has since been gained by Israel as a result of wars and uprisings and Israeli settlements. Israeli policies limiting the supply of water and access to farmland by Palestinians have had deleterious impacts on Palestinian agriculture.
Early agriculture
Jericho, near the Jordan River in Palestine, is one of the oldest agricultural settlements in the world dating to 8,000 BCE or earlier. Eight founder crops were grown at that time or shortly thereafter: three cereals (Einkorn and emmer wheat and barley); four pulses (lentils, peas, chickpeas, and bitter vetch), and flax The fig tree may have been domesticated even earlier, possibly around 9000 BCE. The olive tree was domesticated about 6000 BCE. Citrus trees originated in Southeast Asia but were introduced into Palestine during the first millennium BCE. The early farmers of Palestine had four important domesticated animals: goats, sheep, oxen, and camels.
The importance of Palestinian agriculture was attested in the 10th century by the Palestinian geographer Al-Maqdisi who cited olives, cotton, grapes, and sugar cane among the crops of the region. In the 16th century, Franciscan priest Francesco Suriano added apples, citrus, and sesame to the list of important Palestinian crops. Cotton and sesame were exported to Europe from the 16th century onward.
Ottoman rule The Ottoman Empire conquered the Palestinian region in 1516 and ruled until World War I (1914–1918). Under pressure from European rivals and steeped in a traditional system, the Ottomans attempted a modernization and reform of their society during the Tanzimat period beginning in 1839. Among the reforms was a 1867 law which permitted foreigners to own land in the Ottoman Empire.
In the mid-19th century most Palestinians lived in the hills and mountains that run down the center of the region. This was due to the prevalence of malaria and the danger of Bedouin raids in the lowlands. The highlands were densely populated compared to the lowlands. Many highland villages also owned land in the lowlands and established satellite settlements there. The population in the lowlands increased towards the end of the 19th century as population pressure forced highland farmers to migrate and the Ottomans pushed the Bedouin tribes eastward beyond the Jordan River. Opportunities to profit from commercial agriculture for export also motivated highlanders to move toward the Mediterranean Coast on the west and the Dead Sea and Jordan River on the east. The years after 1856 were a period of economic growth for Palestine, especially for agricultural exports to Europe and regional markets.
Wheat and barley were the most important crops, grown on 75 percent of cultivated land. Yields were best in the northern Jordan valley and the lowland coast with many highland areas having poor yields. Most of the wheat and barley was consumed by the farmers rather than sold. Olive cultivation was common or poorer lands in the highlands both for home use and as a cash crop. Grapes were grown in the vicinity of Hebron. Citrus production expanded in the latter decades of the 19th century near the Mediterranean and was an important export.
In addition to farming in fertile plains and hill terraces, Palestinian villagers and nomadic groups also developed unique forms of agriculture in the coastal dunefields (rimāl). In regions such as Rimal Yibna, Rimal Isdud, al-Nabi Rubin, and Gaza's al-mawasi district, cultivators planted figs, vines, and olives among the dunes, while also establishing irrigated sunken gardens (mawāṣī) that tapped shallow groundwater. These practices, which combined orchard belts, seasonal field crops, and sunken plots, transformed marginal lands officially classified as uncultivable mawāt into productive agricultural landscapes. Research shows that by the 1930s and 1940s, villagers of Yibna and neighboring Bedouin groups had managed to cultivate up to 10 percent of the dunefield, though continuous maintenance was required to resist sand encroachment. Similar systems were documented further south around Ashdod-Yam (Isdud).Roy Marom, Joel Roskin & Itamar Taxel, "A Line in the Sand: The Development of Nineteenth- and Twentieth-Century Sand/Dune Agriculture at Rimāl Yibnā on the Southeastern Mediterranean Coast," Agricultural History 99, no. 3 (2025): 341–375.Roy Marom & Alexander Fantalkin, "Vines among the dunes: sand/dune agriculture in Rimāl Isdūd/Ashdod-Yam during the Late Ottoman and British Mandate periods," Contemporary Levant 10, no. 1 (2025): 19–42. doi:10.1080/20581831.2025.2475263
Theoretically, almost all the agricultural land in the empire was owned by the Ottoman state, but inheritable rights to use the land was granted to individuals and villages. The most important systems of land tenure for agriculture in Palestine were musha'a (also masha'a) and mafrouz, a land tenure system that roughly corresponds to the European concept of private property. Mafrouz land made up only a small percentage of agricultural land. The larger percentage of land called musha'a was allocated and utilized in common by a village or community and parceled out to individuals and peasant families. The land was divided into three fields, each then divided into portions equal in quality and conditions, and then further divided into strips distributed to each village household. The allotment of land would be made depending on the number of working animals each household had. Households without animals got stony ground that couldn't be ploughed as they had no means to do so. If they had acquired animals before the next allotment they could then participate. At intervals of one to five years the peasants redistributed the land usually by lot. Thus, a village farmer did not have rights to a single plot of land, but rather the plot of land he cultivated changed every few years. The redistribution process tended to equalize the economic possibilities of each peasant. A peasant allocated a poor plot of land might find himself with a better plot of land with the redistribution and vice versa.
The musha'a system is often criticized as inefficient and hindering agricultural progress. Given the periodic redistribution of land, the peasant had no incentive to improve the land he was cultivating. The opposite view is that no evidence proves that the musha'a system was less efficient than individual land-holdings and that the musha'a system reduced risks to peasant communities and encouraged communal cooperation and responsibility. In the late 19th century, the growing dependence of some farmers on selling to local and foreign markets for agricultural products and encouraged the increase in individual entrepreneurs who operated in a monetary economy rather than the collective and traditional nature of the musha'a. The Ottoman government attempted, without much success, to eliminate the musha'a with its land law of 1858. The Ottomans aimed to increase its revenue from taxation and to exert more control over land. Jewish settlers who wished to buy land in Palestine beginning about 1880 found the musha'a system inconsistent with their preference for clear titles and boundaries to land. The British continued the effort to eliminate musha'a after they overthrew Ottoman rule during World War I.
By the end of the Ottoman period, the small farmers of the musha'a system were impoverished by government policy hostile to the continuation of collective land tenure, higher taxes, indebtedness, and increased pressure on the land due to population growth. Land was increasingly owned by large investors, many of whom were not resident in Palestine.
Fellaheen agriculture (1840-1914) Fellah cultivation methods and crops When the Ottoman rule ended, 75% of land was being used to harvest grains. Often, a two-field system would be used to grow winter crops wheat and barely on one side and summer crops sesame and Indian millet on the other. The next season, the second side would have the winter crop and the first side would be left unsown. The Ottoman government attempted to ban fallowing and repossess the untilled land but were unable to.
During this period farmers also grew dura, beans, fenugreek, chickpeas, olives, grapes, cotton, and oranges with citrus groves making up 3,000 hectares of land in 1910.
The fellah used a light nail plow so that the fields could be plowed sooner after it had rained compared to the use of animal led plows or heavy machinery.
1858 land code The Ottoman government attempted to establish policies to change how land was owned to eventually take more taxes from the fellaheen. They wanted to shift land ownership from collective holding to an individual land-holding system. The Land Code stated that a village could not own land communally and non-cultivated land would belong to the state.
1876 land law This law stated that Mulk land owned by notables that weren't servicing the Sultan would be taken away and put up for sale to Europeans. Baron Rothschild used 10 million pounds sterling on land plots, settlement constructions, establishing plantations and manufacturing plants. He provided Jewish settlers with a minimum income, helping them to become established in the land. Years later in 1897 the World Zionist Organization was established and in 1899 they created the Keren Kayemet fund which encouraged Jewish settlement and the buying of land.
Effects of these regulations These changes resulted in Jewish-owned land rising from 25,000 dunums in 1882 to 1.6 millions dunums in 1941. Many of the fellah had to sell the titles to their land and work for the new owners due to an increased tax burden. By around 1900, six Palestinian families owned 23% of all cultivated land and 16,910 families owned just 6%.
Beginnings of Jewish agriculture