Plan to support citrus

MoA encourages planting new varieties

The Ministry of Agriculture (MoA) will soon launch a tender to buy 100,000 citrus trees. The trees will be distributed to farmers as part of a program to support citrus growing. The trees will be delivered to farmers in 2015.

The distribution is a trial phase to ensure that the new types of trees could grow in local soil.

“The entire local citrus harvest is collected at the same time, and this leads to an oversupply, and therefore a decrease in prices,” according to a source from the MoA. “The purpose behind this new project is to diversify the citrus crops, so that they would have different harvest seasons,” the source said.

The citrus trees will be distributed among all farmers who already plant these crops. “After being sure that these trees fit the local standards, farmers will be able to replace the old trees with the new ones,” the source said.

The MoA offered a subsidy of around $165,000 to the citrus agricultural cooperative. “The cooperative could help farmers in reducing the production costs,” the MoA source said. The cooperative should work on installing refrigerators for storing the citrus harvest. “Harvesting the crops and storing them in refrigerators would help decrease the use of pesticides and thus cut down the cost, and it could also help farmers increase their exports,” the source said.

The yearly citrus harvest reaches 250,000 tons, of which around 100,000 tons are exported.