Historical Roots of Heritage Horticulture in the Southern Coastal Plain of IsraelMotti Zohar, Yuval Ben-Bassat, Guy Bar-Oz

Land, 2025, 14, 285.

https://doi.org/10.3390/land14020285

The article reconstructs the agricultural landscape of the southern coastal plain

of late Ottoman and British Mandatory Palestine (today southwestern Israel) utilizing

late 19th and early 20th century cartographic materials and aerial photographs. Immense human effort and ingenuity were required to maintain sustainable agricultural on the fringes of the desert. Given our increasingly severe climate crisis, the lessons drawn from these historical agricultural practices have particular resonance. The agricultural systems described in this work extended into the coastal dunes of the region where the shallow water table was exploited to create complex agricultural systems that enabled the growth of citrus trees, grapes, and other crops for export and trade. Aerial photos and maps reveal the critical aspects of this region’s neglected agricultural history. Diverse varieties of fruit trees adapted to the local climate of the western Negev and still have significant economic value for future generations even as currently they are under threat of extinction due to rapid urban development.

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Examples of the shapes and structures of settlements depicted in old maps that were used for population estimates by various area calculations.