Gaza’s Farmers Return to Fields Buried in Rubble and Unexploded Ordnance
Nearly two years into the devastation wrought on the Gaza Strip, Palestinian farmers are attempting to reclaim land that the conflict has rendered almost unrecognisable. With 96 percent of Gaza’s farmland reported destroyed, the people who fed their families and communities through agriculture are confronting fields choked with rubble, contaminated soil, and unexploded ordnance — all while an Israeli blockade continues to obstruct the flow of seeds, equipment, and reconstruction materials needed to begin even the most basic recovery. What is at stake is not only an economic sector but a way of life, a food system, and the long-term ability of Palestinians in Gaza to sustain themselves on their own land.
The Scale of Agricultural Destruction
The figure at the centre of this story — 96 percent of Gaza’s farmland destroyed — signals a near-total collapse of the territory’s agricultural base. Gaza’s farming sector before the current conflict included citrus groves, olive orchards, vegetable plots, and greenhouse operations that had sustained Palestinian families for generations, even under the conditions of the blockade that Israel imposed following 2007. The destruction of that sector means the loss not only of crops and harvests but of irrigation infrastructure, farm equipment, storage facilities, and the accumulated investment of decades.
Farmers returning to their land now face a landscape transformed by bombardment. Rubble — the physical remnant of destroyed homes, roads, and agricultural structures — covers fields that were once productive. Beneath the surface, unexploded ordnance poses a direct threat to any person attempting to till or plant. Clearance of such ordnance is painstaking and dangerous work that requires specialised equipment and expertise, resources that are in critically short supply inside the territory.
The Blockade as an Obstacle to Recovery
Even where farmers possess the will and physical capacity to begin rebuilding, Israel’s blockade is reported to be making recovery nearly impossible. The blockade — which predates the current conflict and has long been documented by United Nations agencies, including OCHA, as severely restricting the movement of goods into and out of Gaza — has, by multiple accounts, tightened dramatically since October 2023. Seeds, fertilisers, agricultural tools, fuel for machinery, and spare parts for irrigation systems are among the categories of goods whose entry into Gaza has been constrained or blocked entirely at various points.
OCHA, which monitors the humanitarian situation in the occupied Palestinian territory, has repeatedly documented how restrictions on imports undermine not only immediate relief efforts but longer-term recovery. Without the inputs necessary to plant and tend crops, farmers cannot produce food even if the land beneath them were cleared and ready.
Who Bears the Weight of This Collapse
The communities most directly affected are those whose livelihoods depended on the land: farming families across Gaza who relied on agriculture for income and subsistence. Beyond individual households, the destruction of local food production deepens Gaza’s dependence on external aid at a moment when the entry of that aid has itself been severely restricted. The humanitarian consequences compound one another — damaged farmland, a tightened blockade, and a population already displaced and food-insecure are elements of a crisis that food-security monitors, including UN agencies, have described in terms of catastrophic and, at points, famine-level food insecurity.
Palestinian farmers returning to their land are engaging in an act of persistence under conditions that make even modest recovery an extraordinary undertaking. The physical danger of unexploded ordnance, the absence of basic inputs, the scale of infrastructure destruction, and the restrictions on imports together form a set of barriers that go well beyond what normal post-conflict agricultural recovery typically entails.
The Wider Pattern: Land, Agriculture, and Palestinian Life
The destruction of agricultural land sits within a longer documented history of land dispossession and restriction that Palestinian rights organisations — among them Al-Haq, B’Tselem, and Human Rights Watch — have tracked across decades. For Palestinians in Gaza specifically, agriculture has represented one of the few remaining economic bases available under the blockade. Its systematic destruction, alongside the destruction of homes, hospitals, and civic infrastructure, is part of what international human rights monitors and legal bodies have examined in the context of obligations under international humanitarian law.
What to Watch
The trajectory of Gaza’s agricultural recovery will depend heavily on whether the blockade is lifted or substantially eased, and whether international mechanisms can facilitate the delivery of agricultural inputs alongside food and medical aid. Organisations monitoring Gaza — including OCHA and UN food agencies — will be critical sources for tracking whether the conditions necessary for even limited recovery are being created. For Palestinian farmers, each season that passes without the ability to plant is a season in which the prospect of rebuilding a self-sustaining food system recedes further.
The return of Gaza’s farmers to their fields is a testament to endurance. Whether that endurance can translate into genuine recovery remains, under current conditions, deeply uncertain.
