Free Range Eggs, Revisited

I met up with a journalist friend who is writing a story on free-range eggs and other organic products being sold in Israel proper but produced in settlements in the West Bank. This is a story I have been interested in for a while, so I went with him the settlement that is Israel's largest producer of organic eggs, and a player in dairy products made from goat milk.

The ride from Jerusalem to Givot Olam took about an hour and a half of driving through the rolling hills of the West Bank on empty two-lane asphalt, and then through a slow street in the outskirts of Nablus, until we got to Itamar, a Jewish community of about 120 Orthodox families. We entered through a yellow metal gate guarded by one soldier armed with a machine gun.

The drive to Givot Olam was another ten kilometers on a steep and narrow strip of road until we got to the farm, which is a cluster of small homes, animal shelters and a guard tower. The view from the farm is spectacular. In the valleys farmland spreads in a flat green and gold sea, broken only by pristine West Bank hilltops covered in low olive trees and scrub. The concrete buildings of Nablus sprawl bluish grey at the feet of some hills. Most of the land is undeveloped in a way unparalleled inside Israel. Here's a view from the road right by the farm.


Givot Olam raises just under 9,000 chickens in seven coops. Each coop has 30 dunams, or about 7.5 acres, for the chickens to flap around outside. The goats go out to pasture daily. The animals lead an idyllic life on lots of land.

"That land must get expensive," I remarked to Asaf, who is the community's stone artist. "Actually, land isn't an issue here," he said. "We just take it from state land."

This is the odd thing about Givot Olam. On the one hand, the farmers preach sustainability and humane treatment for their animals. On the other, these animals range on land stolen either from Israeli State Land - which is land confiscated from Palestinians - or directly from the villages themselves. Givot Olam's owner, Avri Ran, is known as a vigilante who leads groups of boys from the area in endeavors like beating their neighbors, torching their diesel generators and destroying their crops.

We asked about the history of Givot Olam. Fifteen years ago, the Ran couple began moving across the hilltops stretching east of Itamar. Each time, they set up tents at first, then gradually brought in caravans and eventually built permanent structures. Givot Olam is the fourth hilltop in the chain of hills Itamar has seized. Each outpost expands Itamar's area and makes the settlement more entrenched, thus less likely to be given up in a peace agreement with Palesitnians. Sharona, Avri's wife, complained that the hilltop is monitored by Peace Now planes and that getting water from the state is a constant struggle.

We had lunch at the farm, eating feta cheese, labane spread and fruit-flavored yogurt. We visited the coop and took photos of the chickens and the packing room. I recognized some of the labels for eggs that the owner of my local nature store had claimed were made in Israel proper - their label bore no mention of Givot Olam.

It was a confusing day. The organic philosophy of raising chickens and goats with enough room to move and live is a refreshing change from the usual industrial approach in Israeli collective farms, where cows stand in their own excrement all day until their teats are milked by mechanized hands. On the other hand, the only reason places like Givot Olam can afford to farm like this is because the land is beyond cheap - it is stolen.

Sharona said she loves waking up in the morning and seeing the Biblical land of Abraham stretch around her. She added that a lot of volunteers come to the farm, agreeing to observe Sabbath and dress modestly. Many of them leave the farm as more observant environmentalists and as more observant Jews.

We drove to Tel Aviv on the Samaria Bypass Road, which allows travelers to get around the West Bank without going into the Palestinian villages in it. The road is for Israeli travelers only - meaning people with Israeli citizenship, permanent residency, or who would qualify to move to Israel under the Right of Return, that is, who are Jewish.


The Givot Olam delivery truck. This is the logo for the farm, which is an illustration of the outpost including the guard tower.

Goats lounge at the base of a dairy storage tank.

Chickens have room to walk around and take in the sun.

These chickens are eating all organic meal.

They are not in cages. There are no more than six chickens per square meter.

Packing the eggs. This guy is 24 and moved to the farm from Petach Tikva, a city near Tel Aviv.

The labels for the eggs. The blue-orange ones say Givot Olam on them. The green ones say "Live Group" on them, and have an address of Moshav Adanim, which is inside of Israel. Live Group is a marketing company that sells eggs from multiple producers and doesn't specify that some eggs are made in the settlements.

"Welcome to the Samarian Bypass Road. This road is intended for traffic of Israelis only. It is forbidden to drive/transport a person who is not Israeli on this road!! "Israeli" - resident of Israel, whoever lives in the area and is Israeli or is entitled to immigrate to Israel through the Law of Return of 1950, and whoever is not a resident of the area and has a valid permit to enter Israel."