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illustration depicting layers of soil with roots and human artifacts interpersed and people working the surface

Essays

British Mandate Palestine:

'The Fertility of the Soil is in Your Hand': On Manure and the Colonial Roots and Branches of the Organic Movement

Tamar Novick

To substantiate the ideas he was about to present to the British Royal Society of Arts, the newly knighted Albert Howard, considered the founder – or the twentieth century’s most important advocate – of organic farming,1 needed some data. It was the summer of 1935, and the agricultural scientist and retired colonial botanist promoted his views on soil health among English scientists and farmers. This followed more than twenty years of working in India, where he developed a composting method, known as the Indore process (named after the Indian city in which he directed the Institute for Plant Industry). He then invested in the process’ application across colonial contexts as well as at home. Diverse sets of data were necessary to demonstrate the value of this method, to contrast the growing appreciation and desire for artificial fertilisers, and to establish his authority within his professional community in England. In the following months, the text would be published and widely circulated, and, shortly after, Howard would publish a series of books, starting with his 1940 An Agricultural Testament, which carried and popularised the message of organic farming across the Anglo-American world and beyond.

As part of his preparation for the Society lecture, Howard turned to British Palestine’s Director of Agriculture and Forests. Morley Thomas Dawe, himself a botanist and a collector who held posts in numerous colonial contexts in Africa and Latin-America before arriving in Palestine, had a year earlier voiced interest in applying the Indore process to turn animal, human and vegetable waste into manure. When Howard needed data, he reached out to Dawe, reminding him of his ‘interest in the Indore method of converting agricultural waste into humus, and [that that] foreshadow[ed] some actual work on this subject. I should be deeply grateful if you could send me a short account of any work you have in hand and, if possible, of the results so far obtained’ Howard also noted that he could ‘insert a reference to the Palestine work before the lecture goes to press’, and that in return he would ‘send copies of the lecture for distribution in Palestine’.2

Dawe’s reply, about six weeks later, was rather succinct. He admitted that ‘very little has been done in connection with the utilization of agricultural waste in conjunction with night soil’ in Palestine. One small experiment was being held at the time in Jerusalem, but there were no results just yet. In principle, he explained, there was a ‘dearth of agricultural waste, but in instances where there might be a sufficiency there are not adequate measures for collecting night soil’. Additionally, the Department of Medical Services was examining municipal schemes’ plausibility and, in the meantime, a commission was about to travel to Egypt ‘to study this question there’.3 Plans for turning refuse into manure were preliminary, in other words, but the issue was being discussed and examined on several fronts.

Historians of the global organic farming movement have pointed to its entanglements with far-right politics and fascism in Europe,4 and showed that its early theoreticians and advocates were inspired by East and South Asian agricultural practices of using bodily waste in the fields.5 Howard in particular repeatedly referred to the long history of Chinese use of night soil, and discussed how witnessing Indian peasant practices inspired the development of his method and ideas. Yet the deep colonial roots of the organic farming movement, the far-reaching colonial circumstances to which it was applied, as well as how these were foundational to the success and credibility of the advocates, have been largely ignored in the literature. Using the case of Palestine, this essay considers the colonial foundations of organic farming and how, in turn, colonial networks and actions shaped local possibilities of relating different bodies to the soil. It demonstrates that, rather than merely a reaction to the industrialisation of agriculture and the proliferation of chemical fertilisers, the organic movement grew out of multi-contextual colonial concerns about soil health, land, urbanisation and political conflicts.

The common story depicts twentieth century organic farming as a marginal movement, which started gaining traction with the growth of the North American environmental movement in the age of Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring, in the 1960s–1970s. According to the standard narrative, it largely operated as counterculture, an alternative to the capitalist and chemical fertilisers-based food production economy, until the emergence of the large- and global-scale organic food industry of recent decades. As Philip Canford argued for England, however, the early organic farming movement was not ignored or disregarded by state institutions or the public, but was taken seriously, especially by the fertilisers industry, until its marginalsation in the interwar and post-WWII periods.6 This article goes further to demonstrate that organic farming became central to colonial structures and plans. Moreover, the example of Palestine illustrates that, not only was it not marginalised, but it also endured and became institutionalised by mid-century, even when composting and recycling schemes were ultimately not integrated into large-scale waste management systems. While plans to make use of municipal sewage ultimately failed, the Indore process took hold within Jewish agricultural settlements and in Israeli agricultural schools, and state officials and institutions continued to be occupied with manure and promote its production.

Searching for Night Soil in Palestine

The belief that agricultural waste was scarce, as Dawe put it, was characteristic of the heated discussions held among state officials and Jewish settlers in 1930s Palestine, which was under a British rule (1917–1948). With the intensifying citrus industry, which was gradually and exponentially dominated by Jewish settlers,7 manure was in high demand, along with the growth in chemical-fertilisers use, which gained prominence by mid-century. As Omri Polatsek has shown, during this transitional period, the British government was very concerned with the ‘manure problem’, which threatened the success of this industry,8 so pleasing to the English palate. Settlers were discussing the importance of manuring the soil, noting that ‘it has been the common practice to fertilise the Citrus groves with animal manure as the local orchards are closely planted and the Citrus trees withdraw soil’.9 They turned to Palestinian peasants and Bedouins as a source for manure. While animal droppings were a key component in nourishing the Palestinian subsistence economy, settler argued that Palestinian Arabs were not accustomed to using manure for the benefit of their crops, and that they greatly benefited from settlers’ own efforts and knowledge in this matter.10 Settlers’ search for growing amounts of animal manure for the citrus industry created unprecedented movement of waste across the country, a trade which resulted in numerous conflicts and the depletion of the soils from which the droppings were collected or stolen.11

As the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry was trying to deal with this shortage, it operated on several levels. Principally, the government attempted to regulate the movement of manure and initiated a series of limitations and prohibitions on its trade, burning (including for heating) and export. Various importation schemes from Syria, Lebanon and Transjordan were initiated by Palestinian Arabs and Jewish settlers and supported by the government.12 Additionally, poudrette – a fertiliser made of dried human or animal waste – was imported from Egypt for a while, until the Egyptian government began regulating its own manure trade as well.13 Within those limiting circumstances, state officials also sought other options, including turning town refuse into manure. As one agricultural office argued, ‘all towns that already have a sewage system, should be encouraged to make use of the sewage water for the preparation of organic manure’.14

Not only bodily waste, of either animal or human origin, but also knowledge about ways of processing it and putting it to use were in high demand. To examine the possibility of turning refuse into manure, state and municipal officials – many of whom were moving between different British colonial contexts – sought to learn from other, mainly colonial, examples. Throughout the 1930s, two main models were being discussed and examined: the processing of bodily waste into compost outside in the open or, alternatively, within a concrete structure divided into cells. The latter approach, which was developed in Italy, was referred to as the Beccari process, or its later development the Boggiano-Pico process, centred on constructing an indoor ventilated fermentation plant, and was favoured by public health professionals. According to a 1931 report produced by Yousif Milad of the Egyptian Ministry of Agriculture, and read by his equivalents in Palestine, the process was based on soaking garbage in water and placing it in closed cells that were heated enough ‘to kill all pathogenic organisms and to cause a rapid decay in the material’. At the time, it was patented or being trialled in Switzerland, France, Denmark, Sweden, Germany, Spain, the US and Argentina.15

In contrast, the first approach, which necessitated little investment in construction or machinery, was based on the use of large plots of land and many working hands, combining animal droppings and vegetable waste with a urine-soaked soil. This was the principle driving the Indore process that Howard developed and promoted, and which Dawe in Palestine sought to learn more about.

Urine Earth: Organic Farming and Colonial Networks

Like other European theoreticians before him, such as Jusus von Liebig with his chemical model of soil fertility, as well as Karl Marx in his notion of the ‘metabolic rift’,16 Howard relied on ‘the law of return’, namely, the idea that living organisms and the soil sustain each other, and that waste materials should return to the soil to nourish it.17 Separating waste from the soil was increasingly understood as a major indication of the problem inherent to capitalist agriculture. Further, not unlike other Europeans of his time, Howard was deeply inspired by Chinese and other East-Asian composting practices and using human and animal waste for agricultural processes.18 Interestingly, this fascination with Chinese manuring practices emerged at times when the nationalist and then communist Chinese states were concerned with the health risks that manure posed, and were trying to control and reform the vibrant night-soil industry with the rise of what Ruth Rogaski termed ‘hygienic modernity’.19 This process should also be understood in relation to large-scale colonial forms of bodily control, the racialisation of excretory habits and the emphasis on personal hygiene, or ‘excremental colonialism’, as Warwick Anderson terms it.20

Howard’s work during his long colonial tenure in India was fundamentally shaped by this corpus of knowledge, and then by his observations of Indian peasantry practices. These, as he stated explicitly, were the foundations of the Indore process, or as one 1980s report on composting phrased it, during his time in Indore, Howard ‘began to systematise the traditional compost procedures’.21 The Indore process stood on three pillars: animal droppings, vegetable waste and (human or animal) urine. Howard emphasised its simplicity:

The Indore process itself is very simple. It consists in using the fungi and bacteria, which occur in Nature, as agents to break down suitable mixtures of vegetable and animal wastes - the residues of the operations of the farm itself. By arranging these mixtures in the proper way and in the right proportions, and by controlling by the simplest means, namely, by watering and turning, the supply of moisture and air, these wastes are transformed in about ninety days into finely divided humus, rich in the foods required by growing crops. The process can be adapted to climate by manufacture either in shallow pits or low heaps. No buildings or expensive plant are required, nor are pure cultures of the organisms.22

As part of the process, vegetable and animal wastes are piled up and applied with what he termed ‘urine earth’ – soil soaked with urine – which Howard understood to be the key substance in the manufacture of humus, yet ‘much of this vital substance for restoring soil fertility is either wasted or only imperfectly utilised. This fact alone would explain the disintegration of the agriculture of the West.’23 In the minute details of managing soil fertility lies the drama of civilisation and its decline.

Upon returning to England, Howard was occupied with advocating the Indore processes to a variety of colonial contexts and in his home country. In his correspondence with Dawe in Palestine, in the mid 1930s, he argued that ‘the ordinary Indore process for the conversion of agricultural waste into humus is making very rapid progress in many countries, particularly in the plantation industries (tea, coffee, coconuts, etc.)’.24 Specifically, as he discussed in a series of publications published during that period, the process was being trialled in many parts of colonial India, such as Travancore (in current-day Kerala), the Rajputana region (current-day Rajasthan), in the north-west, Sakrand (current-day Pakistan) and the rest of the Sindh province, Punjab, the Nizam dominion, Bengal, as well as in colonial Ceylon (today’s Sri Lanka). It was also used in several parts of Kenya, near Nairobi and in Taveta, and apparently ‘visitors from other parts of Kenya, the Rhodesias, Uganda, Tanganyika [in current-day Tanzania], and the Belgium Kongo’ came to witness the process in action. 25

Governmental officials in Palestine, seeking solutions to the manure problem, inquired about both methods – open-air and closed-cells – as possible approaches to turning refuse into manure. Dawe sent Jaffa’s municipal engineer to Nicosia in colonial Cyprus, to examine the British-initiated plant there.26 He also corresponded with the Brevetti-Beccari-Valtancoli company, who patented the Beccari closed-cell process, to ask for copies of the relevant literature and the patent documents.27 Dawe then turned to the Institute of Plant Industry with a similar request,28 but this was after Howard’s time there. Palestine’s director of medical services explained further that, in comparison to the so-called Italian process, ‘attention has been directed to the method adopted in Indore and in Mysore City, India’, noting that this method was also being introduced to Suez, Egypt, which was under British control.29 He then argued that this process fits the context of Palestine better due to its simplicity and affordability, and suggested trialing it in Jaffa.30 In 1936, the sanitary surveyor of the city of Haifa, was sent to inspect and report on the plant in Suez, where he was accompanied by a member of the Rockefeller Foundation.31 In addition to these regional plants which representatives were sent to observe, Dawe and his successor, F.R. Mason, collected information about the implementation of the composting method in various other contexts such as Australia, Rhodesia, Germany, Malaysia (from Mason’s own experience during his previous colonial post) and England.32

In Your (Prisoner’s) Hands

In Palestine, by the mid 1940s, concrete plans for turning the refuse of Jaffa, Tel-Aviv, Haifa, Rehovot and Jerusalem into manure were being executed or developed. The mayors of Bethlehem and Beit-Jala also voiced their interest. Several private Jewish entrepreneurs proposed their own methods and services as the basis for such municipal plans. One of them was an Italian Jew, an owner of citrus groves in Palestine, who acquired the patent rights for the ‘Beccari process’ of closed-cells in the country.36 Additionally, experiences in composting within Jewish agricultural settlements, as well as the question of fitting the method to Palestine, were discussed in the Jewish settler agricultural journal, Hassade.37 Palestine’s unique political composition, and the settler population’s emphasis on enhancing its agricultural economy, had arguably made more room for examining composting alongside other forms of soil fertility enhancement, such as chemical fertilisers.

For over a decade, state officials debated which approach to composting would fit Palestine best. As a bacteriological approach to medicine was strengthening during a period of intensifying urbanisation, public health and soil health were tied in new ways. With a growing concern about health risks, the ventilated closed-cell process, in which pathogenic organisms were supposedly killed, was understood to be the safest. Major G. Howard-Jones, a British agricultural representative in Lebanon, discussed the problem of manure as a regional one, and believed that city refuse held great potential. In a presentation he gave at the 1944 Middle East Agricultural Development Conference, which was held in Cairo, he discussed the establishment of a new closed-cell plant for processing refuse in Beirut, and explained why Middle Eastern cities are particularly prone to challenging refuse:

Those who are only familiar with Europe will think of town refuse as containing chiefly coal cinders, waste paper, tin, bottles and so one, with comparatively little vegetable and animal matter but it is a well-known fact the further once proceeds south, the higher is the proportion of fermentable material in town waste … Such town waste is very noisome and objectionable, and thought it could be fermented in the open air rather like composting, the mass is so smelly, attractive to rats, mice and flies, and so infected with pathogenic germs that this really could not be considered healthy under any circumstances.38

With the closed-cell plant opening in Beirut in 1943, and another planned for Cairo, colonial state officials initiated a regional conversation and exchange of information, materials and experts. Professionals from Egypt, Palestine and Lebanon corresponded about manuring processes, and some visited the new plant.39 Samples of the manure products were also sent to the Palestine governmental experimental station in Acre to test their value and potency.40

In addition to the tension between public and soil health, the debate about manure was entangled with changing relations between soil and land as well as Palestine’s land question more generally. The Indore open-air process was understood as unfitting to the context of Palestine because it required much land and labour, which were both very expensive.41 Yet, despite that growing preference for the closed-cell approach over composting, especially when municipal refuse was concerned, the Indore process remained under consideration and was applied to Jewish settlements. As the discussions about composting became systematised, the different approaches were examined in relation to one another at the colonial Acre station; the trial compared manure produced in the Beirut plan with ‘compost prepared at Acre by the Indore Process’ as well as ‘Ordinary Farm-yard manure’. The results showed that ‘all three organic manures had little or no effect on yield in the presence of chemical fertilisers, but gave marked increase in the absence of the latter’.42 Not only did chemical fertilisers have an advantage, but the various composting methods also did not seem very different from one another.

The Acre station experiment followed a proposal to use the station grounds for turning Acre city’s refuse into manure. Noting that the patent holders were unlikely to be interested in erecting a closed-cell plant in Acre (supposedly due to the small scale of its refuse), Mason argued that ‘consideration will be given to the possibility of open air composting of the Acre municipal refuse on the Government Farm’,43 thereby solving the problem of land required by the Indore process. To deal with the need for working hands, the Acre farm manager suggested ‘the use of selected prison labour so that the work could be done cheaply and at the same time give the village prisoners an excellent opportunity of learning this semi-skilled work’.44 Reports on the pilot programme of composting Acre’s refuse continued throughout the following year, 1947, highlighting the offensive nature of the fresh material. While no flies or rats were seen around the heaps, ‘hungry dogs from the vicinity were a nuisance’.45 With the end of the British rule in Palestine and the outbreak of the 1948 war, the Acre station and the most concrete composting programme in Palestine were dismantled.

The newly formed Israeli ministry of agriculture continued its preoccupation with manure, and different municipal bodies considered encompassing refuse management plants as part of the construction of urban sewage systems. Many of the same Jewish entrepreneurs, such as the Green & Co., continued proposing different composting methods and the construction of plants. One farmer proposed a method of carrying and distributing cow urine in agricultural fields, which he thought should be particularly valuable in the post-WWII circumstances.46 S. Kalish, a chemical engineer, proposed his own method of turning urban waste into manure. To his proposal Y. Carmon, a member of the Ministry of Agriculture, answered that it is ‘a topical matter and there are a lot of possibilities in this direction’. Not unlike his British predecessors in Acre, Kalish planned to deal with the demand for working hands by using Palestinian captives of the 1948 war and later prisoners. Carmon noted that ‘it is impossible to base any industry on such conditions. But as long as there are war captives it is a possibility.’47

Plans to turn city refuse into manure were ultimately left out of sewage systems, even if not erased completely.48 But the connection between working hands, manure and soil fertility, as well as the utility of the Indore process, endured. The Association for Organic Waste Workers, a new Jewish Israeli organisation promoting organic farming, started working in collaboration with the ministry of agriculture after the war. With the slogan ‘The Fertility of the Soil is in Your Hand’, the association was supplying guidance to agricultural schools, which have been central to the success of the Jewish settlement for half a century, promoting the Indore process across the country.49

Under the wings of the Ministry of Agriculture, the association periodically sent a guide to inspect the compost heaps and the ways in which urine was contained and used. In a letter to the heads of agricultural schools, the main inspector of the ministry of agriculture explained that ‘the field of organic farming includes managing farm animal waste (urine), the collection of all yard and settlement refuse and their turning into compost, efficient use of sewage water and human waste for compost’.50 The travelling guide reported on his impressions from the various agricultural schools, and the extent to which students and staff were adequately managing human and animal waste in their fields. Following one of his visits, and much in line with Howard’s agenda set two decades earlier, the guide suggested that ‘a slogan should be put in place: there is no waste – there is organic matter that determines the fertility of the soil’.51 The institutionalisation of the process and the importance of manure has been, in this sense, complete.

Conclusion

The colonial examination and advocation of organic farming intersected with processes of urbanisation and land appropriation, and became tied to questions of relation between soil health and public health and between soil and land. Rather than a mere critical reaction to the industrialisation of agriculture, and during a transitional period preceding large-scale construction of municipal sewage systems and the age of chemical fertilisers, composting methods occupied a formal colonial position. Organic farming methods were understood as proven, important and available means to enhance soil fertility and battle soil depletion across contexts. In British-ruled Palestine, composting plans and experiments served demographic, economic, political and land-management goals and changes. Catering to the particular needs of the Jewish settlement population and its forming agricultural economy, and in close connection to regional initiatives, state- and settler-led composing projects became inherent parts of development plans. While composting was ultimately left out of sewage and industrial agriculture infrastructures, the collection and processing of bodily waste were imperative elements in shaping the colonial soil and in determining who worked it.

Notes

  1. See, for example, Hershey 1992: 267. ↵
  2. A. Howard, London, to M. T. Dawe, Director of Agriculture & Forests, Jerusalem, 8 Aug. 1935, Israel State Archives [henceforth ISA]/Mem-22/635. ↵
  3. Directory of Agriculture and Forests, Jerusalem to Albert Howard, London, 20 Sept. 1935, ISA/Mem-22/635. ↵
  4. For the English context see Conford 2001; for Germany see Treitel 2017. ↵
  5. Conford 1995. I use ‘bodily waste’ to refer to bodily excreta of either animal or human source, thereby considering both ‘agricultural waste’, or animal manure, and ‘human waste’ along similar lines. Organic farming has relied on bodily waste in its varieties. For further analysis of the category of bodily waste see Novick and Pirogovskaya 2025. ↵
  6. Conford 2002. ↵
  7. Kabha and Karlinsky 2021. ↵
  8. Polatsek 2023. ↵
  9. L. Marcus, Secretary of the Citrus Growers Section (of the Jewish Farmers Federation), to the Director of Agriculture & Forests, 21 Jan. 1934, ISA/Mem-8/648, p. 1. On p. 4, Marcus explains further the meaning of withdrawing soil, noting that ‘experience has shown that for the production of their fruit Citrus trees withdraw great quantities of food materials from the soil which they obtain mostly from the animal manure’.↵
  10. Moshe Smilanskly quoted in Polatsek 2023: 57–58. ↵
  11. Polatsek 2023: 65. ↵
  12. Ibid. See, for example, M.T. Dawe, Director of Agriculture and Forests, to the Director of Medical Services (copy to the Directior of Customs, Excise and Trade), 2 Oct. 1934, ISA/Mem-3/33. ↵
  13. S. Antebi, Agricultural Officer, to M.T. Dawe, Director of Agriculture and Forests, 8 June 1933, ISA/Mem-8/648, p. 1.↵
  14. Ibid, p. 2. ↵
  15. Dr. Yousid Milad, Horticultural Section, Report No. 4: ‘Possibilities in making Organic Manure from Garbage and Street-Refuse in Egypt’, submitted to the Sub-Committee of the Agricultural Advisory Council, April 1931, ISA/Mem-22/635, pp. 4–5. ↵
  16. Marchesi 2020; Foster and Magdoff 1998: 49–50; Davidson and Carreira da Silva 2024: 5–7. ↵
  17. See, for example, Barton 2018: 9. ↵
  18. Howard referred and paid tribute to US American agricultural scientist Franklin Hiram King, who observed composting and other agricultural pracitces in China, Korea and Japan during an eight-month tour in 1909. See Paull 2001. Jörg Henning Hüsemann discussed early Modern European interest in Chinese manuring practices in ‘“A Matter Difficult to Handle” – Waste and Value in European Accounts of Chinese Agriculture’, paper presented at ‘The Waste of the Body’ workshop, Max Planck Institute for the History of Science, Berlin, 6 July 2022. ↵
  19. Barnes 2023. ↵
  20. Anderson 1995. ↵
  21. Rabbani et al. 1983. ↵
  22. Howard 1935: 28. ↵
  23. Howard 1943: 35. ↵
  24. Albert Howard, London, to M.T. Dawe, Director of Agricuture and Forests, Jerusalem, 30 Nov. 1934, ISA/Mem-22/635, p.2. ↵
  25. Howard, 1935. ↵
  26. M.T. Dawe, Director of Agriculture and Forests, Plaestine, to D.L. Blunt, Director of Agriculture, Nicosia, Cyprus, 23 Jan. 1934, ISA/Mem-22/635. ↵
  27. M.T. Dawe to Messes. Societa Anonimal Brevetti ‘Beccari-Valtancoli’ Co., 23 Jan. 1934, ISA/Mem-22/635. ↵
  28. M.T. Dawe to Secretary, Institute for Plant Industry, Indore, Central India, 22 July 1934, ISA/Mem-22/635. ↵
  29. Acting Director of Medical Services to Director of Agriculture and Forests, 3 Sept. 1934, ISA/Mem-22/635. ↵
  30. Director of Medical Services to Director of Agriculture and Forests, 7 Nov. 1934, ISA/Mem-22/635. ↵
  31. Sanitary Officer, Haifa to the Director of the Ministry of Agriculture and the Director of the Ministry of Health, ‘Town Refuse as a Fertilizer’, 16 March 1936, ISA/Mem-23/5082; Also appears in ISA/Mem-22/635. ↵
  32. Extract from the Rhodesia Agricultural Journal 31 (11) (Nov. 1934), ISA/Mem-22/635; ‘A Method of Utilizing Waste Products in(?) Farm Usually Adopted by Australian Farmers’, undated, ISA/Mem-22/635; Irrigation Officer to General Agricultural Council, 7 July 1938, ‘Utilisation of Sewage for Dry Manure’, ISA/Mem-22/635; F.R. Mason, Director of Agriculture and Fisheries, to Chief Secretary, 26 Feb.1942, ISA/Mem-22/635; Colonial Offfice, Westminster, to F.R. Mason, Director of Agriculture and Fisheries, Jerusalem, 2 Aug. 1944, ISA/Mem-22/635. ↵
  33. See, for example, J. Green & Co. (Palestine LTD), Tel-Aviv, to Mayor of the Municipal Corporations, Haifa, ‘Town of Haifa: Centre for the Treatment of Town Refuse by Biological Fermentaion in Silos by Boggiano Pico Process’, 30 Jan. 1947, ISA/Gimel-24/2791. ↵
  34. B.C. Gibbs, District Commissioner, Jerusalem, to Director of Medical Services, ‘Disposal of Refuse, Bethlehem’, 10 Oct. 1933, ISA/Mem-22/635; District Commissioner, Jerusalem, to Director of Agriculture and Fisheries, 14 June 1946, ISA/Gimel-24/2791. ↵
  35. ‘Yakhin’ Agricultural Contracting Co-operative Association, Tel-Aviv, to M.T. Dawe, Director of Agriculture and Fisheries, Jerusalem, 10 Feb. 1937, ISA/Mem-22/635; A.L. Estermann and Eng. A. Hausdorff, Tel-Aviv, to Department of Agriculture, Jerusalem, ‘Memorandum, relating to the disposal and transformation of gargabe into manure’, 29 March 1942, ISA/Mem-22/635; Palestine Industrial Undertakings Ltd. To Director of Agriculture and Fisheries, undated, ISA/Mem-22/635; J. Green & Co. (Palestine) LTD, to Mayor of the Municipal Corporations, Haifa, 30 Jan. 1947, ISA/Gimel-24/2791. ↵
  36. Agricultural Officer, Jaffa, to Chief Agricultural Officer, ‘Organic Manure’, 14 Jan. 1937, ISA/Mem-22/635. The patent rights for the later development, the ‘Boggiano-Pico process’, were Green & Co. Ltd., Tel-Aviv, see ‘Note on the Boggiano-Pico Process’, undated, ISA/Gimel-24/2791. ↵
  37. S. Antebi, Agricultural Officer, Jaffa, to Chief Agricultural Officer, 24 Dec. 1936, ISA/Mem-22/635. ↵
  38. Major G. Howard-Jones, M.E.S.C. Agricultural Representative, Lebanon, ‘Manure from Town Rubbish by the Boggiano-Pico Process’, presentation at the Middle East Agricultural Development Conference, Cairo, Feb. 1944, ISA/Mem-16/662. ↵
  39. Stedman Davies, Controller of Agricultural Production, to Chief Secretary, 14 Dec. 1944, ISA/Mem-22/635; R.D. Badcock, Municipal Corporation, Jerusalem, to F.R. Mason, Directory of Agriculture, Jerusalem, 7 Feb. 1945, ISA/Mem-22/635. ↵
  40. J.C. Evre, Director of Agriculture and Fisheries, to Manager of Government Farm Acre, 23 Feb. 1945, ISA/Mem-22/635. ↵
  41. See, for example, Minutes of the 36th Meeting of the G.A.C, 10 Feb. 1937, ISA/Mem-22/635. This stands in contrast to debates about the use of manure for mid-19th century US, where labour was expensive but land relatively cheap, in Stoll 2002. ↵
  42. Senior Agricultural Assistant, the Governmental Farm, Acre, to Director of Department of Agriculture and Fisheries, ‘Results of Manure Trials from Beirut’, 23 Aug. 1945, ISA/Gimel-24/279, p. 2. ↵
  43. F.R. Mason, Director of Agriculture and Fisheries, to Chief Secretary, 28 Nov.1946, ISA/Gimel-24/279. ↵
  44. Manager, Government Farm Acre, to Director of Agriculture and Fisheries, 17 Dec. 1946, ISA/Gimel-24/279. ↵
  45. Assistant Station Superintendent, ‘Brief Report on Composting of Acre Municipality Wastes’, p. 3, attached to a letter from the Manager, Government Farm Acre, to Director of Department of Agriculture and Fisheries, 27 June 1947, ISA/Gimel-24/279. ↵
  46. Moshe Avramovitch, Sarid, to the ‘Shlush Prize’ Committee, Jewish National Fund, undated, ISA/Gimel-18/2190. ↵
  47. Dr. Y. Carmon to Mr. Zisling, Agricultural Research, Guidance, and Education Department, ‘Mr. Kalish’s Proposal’, 5 Nov.1948, ISA/Gimel-18/2190. ↵
  48. For the example of the Tel-Aviv sewage system plan, see Balslev 2012: 113, 116; A 1966 analysis of composting methods alludes to the existence of closed-cell plants in both Haifa and Tel Aviv. In Kupchik 1966. ↵
  49. See, for example, Reuven Kadosha, Association for Organic Waste Workers, to Agricultural School, Emek Hefer, 12 June 1955, ISA/Gimel-24/2791; Organic Waste Branch to Gronia Rash, Agricultural Education Section, ‘Guidance in the Schools’, 14 Aug. 1955, ISA/Gimel-24/2791. ↵
  50. D. Gazit, Main Inspector, Ministry of Agriculture, to Agricultural School Managers, 7 Nov. 1956, ISA/Gimel-24/2791. ↵
  51. Ya’acov Raz, ‘General Summary form the Visits to Agricultural School around the Production and Management of Organic Waste, during the months of January, February, and March, 1956’, 18 April 1956, ISA/Gimel-24/2791, p. 2. ↵

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