Farming

Muhammadu Mahe wasn’t at home when terrorists came for him one rainy night. It was during the rainy season in 2023. He had travelled to sell livestock and spent the night in the Shinkafi area of Zamfara, North West Nigeria.

The following morning, his brother, Alhaji Usman, rang his phone.

“Dan Hajiya, Yan Bindiga came looking for you last night,” Usman said over the phone. The term, Yan Bindiga, is what most rural residents call terrorists in the area. Muhammadu, who is known as Dan Hajiya in his Ruwan Bado village in the Maradun Local Government Area (LGA), did not fully grasp the message, so he asked, and his brother explained succinctly.

Six armed men on three motorcycles had stormed the village and gone straight to Muhammadu’s house. When they were told he was not around, the terrorists asked one of his children to let them know when he returned. They neither fired a single shot nor abducted any of his three wives and 13 children.

“Normally, they would have abducted a family member to force me to look for them, but they didn’t. It was very surprising,” Muhammadu told HumAngle on the afternoon of June 4 in a town in Zamfara, where he now lives with his family.

Hearing about the terrorists’ visit, he wanted to rush home to check if any of his children had been hurt. He had thought the terrorists were targeting him for more extortion. However, his brother advised him to stay in Shinkafi for at least two more days until they could determine the reason the terrorists were looking for him.

Muhammadu had paid a ₦1.5 million “farming tax” to a terrorist group led by Jamilu, a loyalist of the notorious criminal mastermind, Halilu Sububu, who was killed by the military in 2024. Halilu, originally from Maradun, maintained several camps in the forest reserves in the Sububu/Tubali, Bakura, and Kaya axes. One of such camps is now controlled by Jamilu. Ruwan Bado, Muhammadu’s village, sits not far from Janbako and Faru, two bigger villages in the Talata Mafara town. Terrorist groups routinely attack communities and motorists on the road, a situation that forced several farmers to abandon their farms. 

The lingering crisis engulfing northwestern Nigeria began as a farmer-herder clash in Zamfara over a decade ago. Thousands of people have since been killed, with over a million displaced. Motorcycle-riding terrorists invade communities, schools, farmlands, and roads to abduct people for ransom. Terrorist attacks have persisted in the region despite kinetic and non-kinetic approaches. 

Amid the ongoing armed violence, farmers are severely affected as terrorist attacks disrupt their agricultural activities. Each year, with the onset of the rainy season, terrorists intensify their attacks on rural communities to intimidate farmers, ultimately seeking agreements that often lead to residents paying millions as taxes. Funds collected from farmers help finance their terrorist activities. Farmers who fail to pay are forced to flee their communities for fear of being attacked by the terrorists. However, even paying the tax does not guarantee safety, as seen in several cases, especially in Zamfara State. 

Of recurring attacks and farming taxes

Before the violence escalated in his community, Muhammadu said he had always wondered what he would do without his farms. He is a farmer like his father and grandfather. Everyone in his family is a farmer, including those who have taken government jobs or other businesses. Everyone had a farm before terrorists began to invade their communities. 

The day the terrorists came looking for him was not their first time in the village. Before the rainy season in 2023, Muhammadu said, terrorists attacked the village in broad daylight. “I’ll never forget that attack,” he says as he unravels how the ugly event unfolded. And even before then, there were about three attacks.

A little before 3 p.m. on a Friday, he was sitting down outside the mosque with friends and relatives when terrorists barged into the community, shooting sporadically. He didn’t remember much of what happened immediately after he heard the gunshots, but he ran outside the village. “I ran for several minutes and decided to lie down on my stomach,” he says. His wives and some of his children who were at home also ran out.

The attack didn’t last long. When he returned, people had converged on the village square close to the mosque, with three dead bodies lying on the ground. “It was one of the saddest days of my life. My nephew, Haladu, was one of those killed. His mother is my elder sister. Malam Abubakar Jijji and Malam Usman were also killed in that attack.”

The violent incident changed Muhammadu’s life and that of several others in the community. “Our vigilante members said they got information that the terrorists vowed to turn our community upside down if we didn’t cooperate with them. They said what they did was a warning attack,” he says. Cooperating with the terrorists literally means paying taxes to them before farming. 

The community leaders would later meet to discuss how to negotiate with the terrorists for peace to reign. “We decided to pay the money. We had no option,” Muhammadu says. The terrorists said anyone with more than one farm must pay ₦1.5 million. 

Payment for one farm ranged from ₦400,000 to ₦600,000, depending on the number of acres. His brother, Usman, paid for one farm. The terrorists said the community should not pay the money in a lump sum, but whoever was ready should go and pay their own. 

Muhammadu said he sold some of his livestock to raise the “farming tax”. He had volunteered to take the money to the terrorists in the forest. He took his money and that of another villager, Alhaji Sani, who contributed ₦2 million, resulting in a total of ₦3.5 million. The terrorists asked him to wait on the main road after the Faru community. A few minutes after he arrived, two terrorists on a motorcycle emerged from the shrubs, collected the money, and sped off. 

That same night, Jamilu, the leader of the terrorists, called to inform them that the money had been collected. He instructed them not to go to their farms and to wait for further instructions. While the residents awaited the next directive, the terrorists arrived looking for Muhammadu.

On the run

Muhammadu didn’t wait in Shinakafi for two days, as his brother suggested.

The following morning, he took the first car from Shinkafi to Boko, and from there, another car to Talata Mafara. He disembarked in Janbako, a community neighbouring his village. He said he was being careful because of informants lurking nearby. While waiting for someone to pick him up, his brother called again, asking him to head to Maradun instead because “they got information that the terrorists would kill me”.

He spent three days in Maradun and later sneaked back into his village, Ruwan Bado. At home, he gathered his family members, including his daughters, who were already married, and told them about the situation he had found himself in. 

“They all agreed that I should leave,” Muhammadu says. “One of my daughters thought it was suicidal to return to the community. So, I left for Talata Mafara in the morning.”

The choice of Talata Mafara was intentional as the town sits on the edge of the Bakalori dam with sprawling farmlands where residents engage in year-round farming. From Colony via Rini down to Gora on one side and River Bobo inside Mafara town down to Tumfafiya to the boundaries of Danbaza, stretches of water lie abundant for irrigation farming. 

“I was wrong. I didn’t know that farmers were also fleeing the Rini (in Bakura) and Gora (in Maradun) axis due to incessant attacks. Most of the farms are now abandoned,” he recalls. He moved farther down to the other side of Mafara town, this time to Tsakuwa, a suburb on the road to the communities of Sauna, Garbadu, Morai, and Kagara in southern Mafara. 

However, these communities also face terrorist attacks, making the roads and the farms on both sides of the road very vulnerable. This situation compounds Muhammadu’s problems.

“Since then, I’ve not gone back to Ruwan Bado. My family joined me here after three months.”

Even after three years, Muhammadu says he has not looked back because several people he knows have left the community. His elder brother, Usman, has also left for Maradun town with his family because Ruwan Bado and the communities around it have continued to witness terror attacks. 

“Even some months back, people were killed in our community as the attacks continued,” Muhammadu says. “I don’t know whether the Yan Bindiga (bandits) are still looking for me, but I think it’s unsafe to go home.” Only a few families remain in Ruwan Bado. 

Sani, the person whose farming tax Muhammadu took to the terrorists alongside his, has also left the community for Mafara town. “Even after collecting our money, the terrorists kept returning. There was a time they attacked the community and stole our livestock. I lost more than 10 cows to that attack,” the 63-year-old man told HumAngle. 

Muhammadu said he heard about the attack last year and advised Sani to leave the community. Sani was one of the three well-to-do people in the area. Life was good to him; he had three wives and 17 children, some of whom were already married. Aside from owning five farm fields, he was a trader and livestock merchant before the violence consumed his property. He sold some of his livestock out of fear of cattle-rustling terrorists and retained only the animals he used for ploughing on his farms.

“I encouraged our people to accept the terrorists’ demand for farming tax, believing that we would be allowed to go to the farm. But after we paid, the terrorists allowed us to start working, after which they continued attacking us. It was very unsafe for me to continue living in the community,” Sani, who now lives with his family in a rented apartment in Mafara, said. He has tried, to no avail, to gather the remnants of his wealth to start a business in the town but he said “it’s frustrating because the capital is too small and I don’t even know where to start from.”

As Muhammadu continues to flee, many farmers in the region are suffering from terrorist attacks, especially with the onset of the rainy season in the core northern states. The situation in communities like Ruwan Bado is worsened by a lack of adequate security agents to protect residents. Since there is an absence of conventional security forces in most of the communities, residents pay a farming or protection tax as requested by terrorists to avoid being attacked.

‘There was only a road checkpoint for soldiers on the Colony – Boko road, which is even farther away from us. Without adequate security agents, it’ll be difficult for us to go to farms or markets. When the terrorists attack, it’s only the vigilante group members who fight them back,” Muhammadu said. HumAngle learnt that the Zamfara State government recruited operatives for its Community Protection Guards (also known as Askarawa) and posted them to all communities facing security challenges in the state. But Muhammadu, who left Ruwan Bado in 2023, couldn’t confirm if there are Askarawa in his community now. 

James Barnett, a conflict researcher at Hudson Institute, believes terrorists are using the vacuum created by the absence of governance in some of the rural communities in North West Nigeria. The terrorists believe it’s easier and more profitable to enforce levies than to attack communities. “Communities that have no protection from the state often have no choice but to submit to bandit demands in order to be allowed to farm—and survive,” he said. 

“The regions where bandits are strongest are the sorts of areas where there has been almost no meaningful state presence in years—roads, schools, clinics and the like. Bandits have essentially filled a vacuum in those parts of rural Nigeria that the state has neglected,” Barnett, who has written extensively on the banditry conflict in the North West, added. 

The consequences of this reality are evident in communities, where residents say concerns about survival and security now overshadow everyday economic worries.

“Many villages in Tsafe are no longer thinking about where to get the cheapest fertiliser; instead, they are worried about how to access their farms safely. In some communities, despite paying ransoms and levies to the terrorists, locals are still not confident that their lives will be spared,” Abubakar Bala, a resident of Tsafe in Zamfara, told HumAngle.

Monduli, Tanzania – When drought wiped out most of her family’s livestock, 30-year-old Nesirkar Loongidong’i, a Maasai mother of four from Selela village in northern Tanzania, found herself with very few options. The dry season had already killed most of their animals.

Today, she makes a living growing and selling drought-resistant livestock fodder.

“Before I planted fodder, I lost most of our goats. Now, people come from other villages to buy grass, and I can support my children. I don’t fear drought anymore,” Loongidong’i told Al Jazeera.

With the income, she has built a house and bought five goats.

Loongidong’i’s story is part of a much larger and fast-growing shift. Across northern Tanzania, Maasai women, part of a community of about 430,000 people, are turning fodder production from a survival tactic into a climate-adaptation business. The work is coordinated by the Pastoral Women’s Council (PWC) and is spreading across pastoral districts.

The PWC is a women-led membership organisation working across three northeastern districts, covering more than 28,000 square kilometres (10,810 square miles) and serving about 456,000 people, most of them Maasai pastoralists. Founded in 1997, it now counts around 6,500 members in 90 villages, with years of work focused on land rights, economic empowerment, and girls’ education.

For Loongidong’i, it all comes down to growing pasture grass without irrigation. Because demand remains steady, so does her income, and with it, her household’s stability. Today, she lives in a home with a metal roof, and nearby, her goats graze in a fenced area as their numbers slowly grow again.

According to Tanzania’s Ministry of Livestock and Fisheries, at least 306,358 animals, including cattle, goats, sheep, and donkeys, died between September 2021 and January 2022 due to prolonged drought. In Simanjiro district alone, 92,047 livestock were lost, wiping out livelihoods across pastoral communities.

In response, the PWC established 10 major grass seed banks across eight villages in Monduli and Longido districts. Today, about 75 hectares (185 acres) are under fodder production, with another 37 hectares (90 acres) expected to be added in the 2025-2026 season. Around 250 women directly manage these farms, while thousands of herders now depend on them for feed during dry seasons.

The impact is already visible. In 2025, a single seed bank earned 6.6 million Tanzanian shillings (about $2,500) from seed sales, along with 1,111 hay bales sold at 6,000 shillings ($2.30) each. For many women, this has shifted their role from dependents to economic providers.

Backed by organisations such as the Global Fund for Women and Oxfam, the PWC is now seen as offering a replicable model for protecting a livestock economy worth millions of dollars.

This shift is no longer limited to survival. Across northern Tanzania, it is becoming a quiet but steady form of enterprise, reshaping daily life in pastoral communities.

From survival to business

In Longido and Monduli, deep in northern Tanzania, Maasai life has been slowly changing. As traditional grazing patterns weaken under worsening droughts, women are increasingly taking on roles once tied only to herding, now growing pasture for income on open communal land.

Loongidong’i explains that what began as a way to survive dry years has now become a reliable source of income for many women. In the past, planting hardy grasses such as Cenchrus ciliaris was simply about keeping livestock alive. Today, it is also a business.

To respond to declining rainfall, women grow resilient species such as Rhodes grass (Chloris gayana) and Masai love grass (Eragrostis superba) on designated community plots. These grasses stay green longer than natural pasture during dry periods. Once harvested, they are bundled and sold to local herders as animal feed.

“Seeds are also saved and traded later when demand rises,” Loongidong’i says, adding that this cycle now supports many households across arid areas.

Herding families also benefit during drought periods, when natural grazing disappears and these managed plots become a lifeline for livestock.

The seed bank project, managed by Naisho, the group Loongidong’i works with under the PWC, generated about 6.6 million Tanzanian shillings ($2,514) from seed sales, alongside more than 1,000 bales of grass. Small in scale, but steady in output, it has proven what organised local production can achieve.

For the Maasai, cattle are more than livestock; they are the centre of daily life, economy, and identity. When rains fail, the impact is immediate: animals weaken, and families struggle.

As in many pastoral communities, women carry much of the responsibility for daily survival, from food preparation to fetching water and caring for children. Now, alongside those roles, they are also becoming earners.

“Women who once depended entirely on their husbands now have their own income,” says Rachel Letiety, a founding member of the PWC. “Families are becoming more stable. Men are beginning to value women’s contributions, especially during droughts.”

Ongoing challenges

Still, the progress comes with challenges.

Loongidong’i says some farms are affected when weeds take over and when fences break, allowing livestock, and sometimes wild animals, to destroy carefully cultivated plots.

“I have seen invasive plants ruin large parts of our farms,” she says. “And sometimes animals enter and destroy what we have worked on for months. It is not easy to guard these fields every day.”

She also points to tensions within groups, where disagreements sometimes arise over responsibilities and how income is shared.

At present, with support from organisations such as Justdiggit, Trees for the Future, and Swissaid, around 200 women are directly involved in the project. Many more benefit indirectly, especially during drought periods when pasture becomes scarce.

“This work prevents our cattle from dying and keeps them healthy,” says Nairiyamu Laizer, a mother of three and secretary of the Naisho group. “It also helps sustain the bulls we raise.”

“If all women take up this opportunity, these projects can lift our economy,” she adds.

“We harvest the grass and sell it; some buyers use it for cattle feed, others for thatching houses. We also grind some of it into animal feed,” she says.

For Loongidong’i and many Maasai women, growing fodder is no longer just about surviving difficult seasons. It has become a new beginning, reshaping livelihoods and the place of women in pastoral life.

“Now women help bring money into their homes,” she says, “and families are becoming more stable.”

This article is published in collaboration with Egab.

A mushroom farm in Jericho, an heirloom seed library, a project to introduce Kale to the Palestinian market and a local farmers’ cooperative – these small agricultural projects are the latest weapon in the fight against the Israeli occupation. They aim to tackle the policies that make Palestine dependent on the Israeli market and offer alternatives for Palestinians who find themselves forced to buy Israeli products.

After returning to Palestine for the first time in five years, Vivien Sansour noticed changes in her homeland. “All the things I had missed, like the delicious tomatoes and cheese, the things old ladies would come and sell at the front of our house, they were gone,” says Sansour. “I thought I was coming home and I found myself coming back to a place that was foreign to me where I was buying Israeli broccoli in the supermarket and that was what was available.”

In June, she officially launched Palestine’s first heirloom seed library as a way to preserve the knowledge of generations of farmers who have cultivated varieties of organic vegetables, fruits and herbs adapted for the region’s climate and soil. Due to Israeli policies and neo-liberal farming techniques, these varieties, and traditional Palestinian farming as a whole, are facing extinction. These tiny seeds, she says, have the power to stop this from happening. Anyone can borrow a packet of the library’s seeds and grow the local varieties of produce, returning seeds from the next harvest.

“The heirloom seed gives us power to resist our dominance, though our heirlooms seeds we can truly eat what we grow and stop having to be slaves to our master,” she says.

Under the Oslo Accords, around 63 per cent of agricultural land in the West Bank was designated as “Area C”, which means it fell under the control of the Israeli military. As a result, farmers whose land fell in that 63 per cent were unable to farm their land freely, as is still the case. Meanwhile, Israeli settlements in the West Bank have mushroomed, and settlement farms are able to produce a large quantity of crops at low cost using pesticides, leaving traditional farmers unable to compete. Unequal water resources allocated to Palestinians and Jewish settlers living in the same territory makes keeping up almost impossible.

According to the Israeli occupation authorities, the value of goods produced in settlements and exported to Europe amounts to approximately $300 million a year. Israel is flooding the Palestinian market with cheap Israeli products whilst simultaneously controlling the Palestinian exports and imports. Restrictions on the importation of fertilizers has cut agricultural output in the OPT by an estimated 20-33 per cent. This pressure is forcing Palestinian farmers to leave their land, with many having to work on the settlement farms that displaced them on as little as half the Israeli minimum wage, in unsafe working conditions, and without holiday or sick pay.

“Oslo has been a disaster for agriculture in Palestine,” says Sansour. Aside from the restrictions placed on farmers as a result of the agreement, it also brought foreign donations to the agricultural section, she explains. “The aid was designed in a very neo-liberal way on the production of certain items and the elimination of people – that’s the idea of agribusiness.” This sort of funding pushed farmers away from sustainable agriculture to mono-cropping (the production of one type of crop) designed for consumer export or selling to the Israeli market, using methods relying on chemicals, she says.

Sansour highlights the Paris Protocol, an annex of the Oslo Accords, which tied the Palestinian economy with the Israeli economy. This has led to a situation, she says, where the tobacco industry is renting Palestinian land for prices small-scale producers cannot compete with. “We went from producing food to producing poison,” she poignantly adds.

The same factors motivated Lamya Hussain to implement The Kale Project – Palestine, a joint venture by organisations MAAN Development Center and Refutrees to introduce kale to the Palestinian market. Two years on and two solid harvests of three types of kale and the project is looking to expand. “There are many ways Israel controls what is produced and why and how, and we want to challenge this,” says Hussain. “We are challenging the occupation through cross diversity because one of the things the Israeli occupation has done to the agricultural sector is that it’s reduced it to a few basic crops.”

“One key issue facing small-scale Palestinian producers is the challenge to work around previously negotiated economic agreements via which Israeli goods are dumped in the local market,” she explains. “To this end, there is always the risk that Israeli producers can take advantage of the rising demand for kale and flood the market with larger quantities and cheaper prices.” Hussain continues, “It’s very difficult for people like myself or for the project, and even more difficult for smaller scale farmers who are competing against not only consumer market prices and local competition, they’re actually competing with an occupied-led system in the market.”

Fareed Taamallah was one of these small scale farmers struggling to sell his produce in this system. Tired of selling his olives and olive oil in bulk to a trader who then sells it to the consumer while taking most of the profit, he co-founded Sharaka. The organisation links Palestinian farmers and consumers directly, promoting Baladi food, a word for local, seasonal and Palestinian produce.

“In Occupied Palestine, the matter of keeping the farmer in his land cultivating and producing is more important than any other place because it is not only a matter of producing, but also a matter of food sovereignty,” says Taamallah. “Sharaka is trying to tackle part of these problems and help small-scale farmers to stay in their land by helping them to market their product at good prices, and in this way support them to remain steadfast in their groves. On the other hand, we try to help the consumer to have access to the good, healthy food and not depend on the Israeli products that are found in the local market.”

For the Palestinian farming industry, the Israeli occupation has been deadly. But these agricultural efforts are seeking to change the status quo by offering Palestinians alternatives to the Israeli products that fill up their local supermarkets. As Sansour puts it, buying the produce of the occupation is like smoking; “you pay for your own poisoning”.

Images courtesy of The Kale Project – Palestine.

The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Monitor.

THE UK’S biggest strawberry-picking field that spans more than 150 acres is an affordable day out.

A trip to a pick-your-own fruit farm is a wholesome activity that should be on everyone’s summer checklist.

And a Surrey farm, 19 miles from London, boasts Britain’s largest strawberry picking field, with acres of plants to harvest your own fruity treats from.

Garson Farm in Esher has been growing crops for over 155 years and now welcomes visitors to have a field day picking strawberries every summer.

Open now for the season, guests can take to the expansive greenery and help themselves to the tunnel-grown strawberry plants.

Open rain or shine every day of the week, the farm costs just £2.50 per person to enter, while under twos go free, with bookings limited to eight tickets.

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The farm is open from 9am to 6pm Monday to Saturday and 10am to 5pm on Sundays and the ticket price does not cover any crops picked during the outing.

While fruit fans can expect supplies of strawberries in the field to be booming in the height of summer, the farm warns that crops can be limited during the early season.

“The 2026 PYO season has begun with delicious early-season strawberries,” the Garson Farm website states.

“During the early season, crops may not yet be available in abundance. In this phase, we may need to rest the crops to allow them time to grow and produce more fruit.”

Typically, the UK’s strawberry season is between June and late August, with mid-July being peak time.

The farm also offers its pick-your-own deal for plenty other fruits and veggies when they are in season, although it’s just strawberries up for grabs right now.

There are apples, blackberries, carrots, broccoli, cucumbers, cherries, onions, plums and more growing in the fields – but the farm states that “these crops need more time to grow” for now.

A mushroom farm in Jericho, an heirloom seed library, a project to introduce Kale to the Palestinian market and a local farmers’ cooperative – these small agricultural projects are the latest weapon in the fight against the Israeli occupation. They aim to tackle the policies that make Palestine dependent on the Israeli market and offer alternatives for Palestinians who find themselves forced to buy Israeli products.

After returning to Palestine for the first time in five years, Vivien Sansour noticed changes in her homeland. “All the things I had missed, like the delicious tomatoes and cheese, the things old ladies would come and sell at the front of our house, they were gone,” says Sansour. “I thought I was coming home and I found myself coming back to a place that was foreign to me where I was buying Israeli broccoli in the supermarket and that was what was available.”

In June, she officially launched Palestine’s first heirloom seed library as a way to preserve the knowledge of generations of farmers who have cultivated varieties of organic vegetables, fruits and herbs adapted for the region’s climate and soil. Due to Israeli policies and neo-liberal farming techniques, these varieties, and traditional Palestinian farming as a whole, are facing extinction. These tiny seeds, she says, have the power to stop this from happening. Anyone can borrow a packet of the library’s seeds and grow the local varieties of produce, returning seeds from the next harvest.

“The heirloom seed gives us power to resist our dominance, though our heirlooms seeds we can truly eat what we grow and stop having to be slaves to our master,” she says.

Under the Oslo Accords, around 63 per cent of agricultural land in the West Bank was designated as “Area C”, which means it fell under the control of the Israeli military. As a result, farmers whose land fell in that 63 per cent were unable to farm their land freely, as is still the case. Meanwhile, Israeli settlements in the West Bank have mushroomed, and settlement farms are able to produce a large quantity of crops at low cost using pesticides, leaving traditional farmers unable to compete. Unequal water resources allocated to Palestinians and Jewish settlers living in the same territory makes keeping up almost impossible.

According to the Israeli occupation authorities, the value of goods produced in settlements and exported to Europe amounts to approximately $300 million a year. Israel is flooding the Palestinian market with cheap Israeli products whilst simultaneously controlling the Palestinian exports and imports. Restrictions on the importation of fertilizers has cut agricultural output in the OPT by an estimated 20-33 per cent. This pressure is forcing Palestinian farmers to leave their land, with many having to work on the settlement farms that displaced them on as little as half the Israeli minimum wage, in unsafe working conditions, and without holiday or sick pay.

“Oslo has been a disaster for agriculture in Palestine,” says Sansour. Aside from the restrictions placed on farmers as a result of the agreement, it also brought foreign donations to the agricultural section, she explains. “The aid was designed in a very neo-liberal way on the production of certain items and the elimination of people – that’s the idea of agribusiness.” This sort of funding pushed farmers away from sustainable agriculture to mono-cropping (the production of one type of crop) designed for consumer export or selling to the Israeli market, using methods relying on chemicals, she says.

Sansour highlights the Paris Protocol, an annex of the Oslo Accords, which tied the Palestinian economy with the Israeli economy. This has led to a situation, she says, where the tobacco industry is renting Palestinian land for prices small-scale producers cannot compete with. “We went from producing food to producing poison,” she poignantly adds.

The same factors motivated Lamya Hussain to implement The Kale Project – Palestine, a joint venture by organisations MAAN Development Center and Refutrees to introduce kale to the Palestinian market. Two years on and two solid harvests of three types of kale and the project is looking to expand. “There are many ways Israel controls what is produced and why and how, and we want to challenge this,” says Hussain. “We are challenging the occupation through cross diversity because one of the things the Israeli occupation has done to the agricultural sector is that it’s reduced it to a few basic crops.”

“One key issue facing small-scale Palestinian producers is the challenge to work around previously negotiated economic agreements via which Israeli goods are dumped in the local market,” she explains. “To this end, there is always the risk that Israeli producers can take advantage of the rising demand for kale and flood the market with larger quantities and cheaper prices.” Hussain continues, “It’s very difficult for people like myself or for the project, and even more difficult for smaller scale farmers who are competing against not only consumer market prices and local competition, they’re actually competing with an occupied-led system in the market.”

Fareed Taamallah was one of these small scale farmers struggling to sell his produce in this system. Tired of selling his olives and olive oil in bulk to a trader who then sells it to the consumer while taking most of the profit, he co-founded Sharaka. The organisation links Palestinian farmers and consumers directly, promoting Baladi food, a word for local, seasonal and Palestinian produce.

“In Occupied Palestine, the matter of keeping the farmer in his land cultivating and producing is more important than any other place because it is not only a matter of producing, but also a matter of food sovereignty,” says Taamallah. “Sharaka is trying to tackle part of these problems and help small-scale farmers to stay in their land by helping them to market their product at good prices, and in this way support them to remain steadfast in their groves. On the other hand, we try to help the consumer to have access to the good, healthy food and not depend on the Israeli products that are found in the local market.”

For the Palestinian farming industry, the Israeli occupation has been deadly. But these agricultural efforts are seeking to change the status quo by offering Palestinians alternatives to the Israeli products that fill up their local supermarkets. As Sansour puts it, buying the produce of the occupation is like smoking; “you pay for your own poisoning”.

Images courtesy of The Kale Project – Palestine.

The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Monitor.

EVERYONE loves a family day out, but let’s face it, everything is better when it’s free.

The much-loved Cotswold Farm Park run by Countryfile’s Adam Henson, has scooped up a Tripadvisor Traveller’s Choice Award for the last 15 years.

Follow The Sun’s award-winning travel team on Instagram and Tiktok for top holiday tips and inspiration @thesuntravel.

To celebrate, the attraction is offering free tickets to children, toddlers and babies.

The T&Cs are that it’s one complimentary ticket to each paying adult and or senior guest, and the offer is only running until the end of May.

Families can take advantage of the offer through May half-term and on the bank holiday (but make sure to book in advance).

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The farm park is open seven days a week with plenty of activities to enjoy from feeding time with lambs and baby goats to jumping on its bouncy castle and trying out the zip wire.

When it comes to animals, visitors can get up close and personal with lots of breeds.

There’s Gillie the Jersey Cow, Marge the Middle White Pig, and Attenborough the Highland bull calf.

Feeding sessions with some of the youngest animals happen twice daily at 11.30AM and 3.30PM with lambs and baby goats.

There’s also a chance to watch chicks hatch as well as meet guinea pigs, rabbits and ducklings.

When it comes to playtime, children can head into the Adventure Barn – which is perfect for rainy days with didi cars and soft play.

Outside children can jump up and down on bouncy pillows, go on swings, zip wire, pedal tractors, explore the sandpit and climbing frame.

There’s a wooded area for bird-spotting and bee hive to take a look at too.

Between May 23 and May 31 the farm is celebrating Bee Wild Week with new activities like daily talks from the farm’s beekeeper-in-training.

When it’s time to eat, head to The Ox Shed Restaurant for all-day dining from breakfast to dinner, and pizza evenings every Saturday night.

Families from further afield can book to stay on-site at the campsites.

It has tent pitches to glamping tents, luxury lodges and new cabins.

A one-night stay on a grass tent pitch with electric starts from £67.

Head of Sun Travel (Digital) Caroline McGuire visited the farm park last year, she said: “Spring is easily the best time to visit any farm in the UK, as new lambs, chicks, calves and piglets all arrive noisily on the scene.

“Inside the Discovery Barn, which teaches children all about farm animals, my five-year-old son petted chicks and baby rabbits, and was lucky enough to see a lamb being born.

“We refuelled at the on-site Ox Shed restaurant, dining on burgers and loaded salads, washed down with apple juice and a glass of Adam Henson’s own pale ale for me.”

Harare, Zimbabwe – Zimbabwe’s real estate and farming sectors are seeing a surge in diaspora-driven investment, with two young content creators quietly emerging as unexpected influencers shaping the trend.

Kundai Chitima, 31, and Kelvin Birioti, 20, each running their own social media channel, have built followings that seem to influence a growing number of Zimbabweans abroad considering return or investment.

On YouTube and Instagram, they share short videos and posts highlighting opportunities in Zimbabwe. Their popular content ranges from property tours and agricultural tips to market trend analysis.

For some in the diaspora, decisions about returning or investing increasingly appear to be shaped less by official narratives and more by social media content offering on-the-ground perspectives of life in Zimbabwe.

One of those influenced is Catherine Mutisi, who spent 17 years living in the United Kingdom working as an accountant. During that time, she had already begun investing in Zimbabwe, building two houses, buying a small plot and starting a business.

She said her thinking shifted after coming across Birioti’s content during construction.

“Gradually, my mind and plans shifted from just visiting Zimbabwe towards wanting to permanently relocate,” she said.

Mutisi said earlier narratives about Zimbabwe had made her cautious, but online content presented a different perspective.

“Previously, I was just building my houses for my family to get some money. But after watching the videos, my eyes opened,” she told Al Jazeera.

Her experience is not isolated. Both Chitima and Birioti say they hear similar accounts from the Zimbabwean diaspora reassessing their long-term plans.

UK-based Zimbabwean Nyashadzashe Nguwo, an Africa market entry and global expansion adviser, said many people like Mutisi are relocating to Zimbabwe due to what he described as a combination of emotional and lifestyle-driven factors.

“There’s a strong desire among many in the diaspora to reconnect with their roots and contribute meaningfully to national development. For some, the lower cost of living and the opportunity to build something impactful at home outweigh concerns about economic instability,” Nguwo told Al Jazeera.

Two influencers

After growing up in Chinhoyi, a town in northern Zimbabwe about 120km (75 miles) northwest of the capital, Harare, Birioti sought a new start and enrolled at Zimbabwe Ezekiel Guti University (ZEGU) in Bindura. He dropped out, however, due to financial challenges and decided to move to Harare.

There, he met Chitima and began learning content creation. From the outset, he said he avoided entertainment-style content, instead focusing on what he saw as an information gap.

“I saw a gap: the diaspora community was being scammed.”

He built his platform about real estate, rural development and farming projects, often working with diaspora Zimbabweans who granted access to their properties for documentation.

On the other hand, Chitima worked as a teacher in South Africa before returning to Zimbabwe in 2015.

He said workplace inequality influenced his choice: “We were earning lower than my South African colleagues. I thought of my dignity and made a decision to return home.”

Chitima returned to Zimbabwe with limited resources and a pregnant wife, entering a very different economic environment from the one he had left.

Before his time in South Africa, he had worked as a civil servant. After returning, he gradually moved into content creation, beginning in 2015 and later training younger creators who went on to build large audiences.

Today, he reflects on his platform as both educational and protective for diaspora audiences.

“I receive calls from people crying … they have been scammed.”

He says his content aims to replace uncertainty with grounded information about the realities and opportunities in Zimbabwe.

Economic pressure and unemployment

While no official figures are publicly available on the exact number of Zimbabweans leaving the country or their reasons for doing so, reports from the International Organization for Migration and independent migration studies indicate consistent migration.

The Zimbabwe National Statistics Agency (Zimstat) reported a 21.8 percent unemployment rate in the third quarter of 2024, based on strict International Labour Organization definitions.

Between 76 percent and 80 percent of workers are in the informal sector, relying on subsistence or unregulated employment. Youth unemployment is particularly acute: a 2025 World Bank report estimates it at 76.8 percent.

For many young people, stable employment is increasingly difficult to secure.

Susan Sibanda, 26, describes moving between short-term and informal work.

“I have been switching from one casual job to the next,” Sibanda said.

Her experience reflects a wider labour market where formal employment continues to shrink. In recent years, several big retailers, including Choppies, Truworths, OK Zimbabwe, and N Richards, have downsized or closed operations.

Emigration pressures remain strong

Against that backdrop, migration still features heavily in the decisions of young Zimbabweans.

Sibanda said she now considers that “leaving Zimbabwe is in my best interest”.

Economist Tashinga Kajiva said the story of emigration from Zimbabwe has largely remained high, driven by a combination of push and pull factors that encourage people to seek what they see as greener pastures.

“Zimbabwe’s economy is marked by complex and, some would say, difficult dynamics. For ordinary citizens, disposable income remains low while the cost of living continues to rise. The marginal propensity to save among working-class citizens is also low, as many are living hand to mouth,” he told Al Jazeera.

Zimbabwe’s diaspora is concentrated in South Africa, the United Kingdom, Australia, Canada, New Zealand and the United States, according to government figures.

Keeping ties alive from abroad

The economic link between Zimbabwe and its diaspora remains strong.

According to real estate agents, diaspora buyers now account for a significant share

They state that up to 50 percent of high-end residential properties sold were purchased by Zimbabweans living abroad in recent years. In some regions, land prices have risen by 20–30 percent year-on-year, a surge partly attributed to diaspora buyers.

Diaspora investment is also noticeable in agriculture. Reports from the Zimbabwe Farmers Union indicate that about 10-15 percent of new farm leases over the past two to three years involve diaspora investors, with activity concentrated in Mashonaland Central and Matabeleland regions.

Remittances reached $1.7bn in 2023 and continue to rise. In 2025, Zimbabweans abroad sent $2.45bn home, with the UK and South Africa the largest sources, according to government data. A significant portion of these funds is reportedly invested in real estate, agriculture, and small businesses.

This reflects both practical necessity and emotional attachment to home, as well as a preference for investing in familiar environments, according to economists.

Still, return seems to generate mixed reactions.

Some diaspora Zimbabweans appear cautious, citing political developments and recent protests abroad over governance concerns.

For them, financial ties to Zimbabwe are still strong, but physical return remains uncertain.

With social media reshaping perceptions of life in Zimbabwe, many in the diaspora remain caught between investment opportunities and the country’s economic realities.

As content creators like Chitima and Birioti reshape how some see opportunity in Zimbabwe, domestic economic pressures appear to be pushing others away, leaving the country’s relationship with its diaspora open-ended and still evolving.

“For many Zimbabweans living abroad, investing back home is not just about profit – it’s about staying connected to their roots and shaping the future of their communities,” said Chitima.