Hundreds of farmers protested on Monday morning across Israel, denouncing Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich's proposed reforms to the dairy industry and in support of the future of agriculture in Israel.
Demonstrators gathered at 10 junctions nationwide and blocked traffic.
Smotrich's proposal includes reducing domestic milk production and encouraging the import of dairy products.
Israeli farmers have warned that the proposal would severely harm the agricultural sector and lead to the closure of approximately 400 dairy farms, thereby harming Israel's food security. Farmers also noted that the reform is expected to harm field crops that rely on the dairy industry and supply roughage to dairy farms.
It would also lead to the abandonment of agricultural land across Israel, including border communities in the Galilee and Arava, they added.
Farmers also criticized the government's policy of importing agricultural products duty-free from the US and other countries, while imposing tariffs on Israeli exports, without support or protection for local agriculture, claiming this would severely harm all agricultural sectors.
Farmers federation chair: Farmers are Israel's 'Iron Dome of food security'
"On October 7, the terrorists stood here at the Gilat Junction and infiltrated moshavim and kibbutzim and murdered, looted, and raped. Today, we are here so that farmers across the country are not eliminated," Israel Farmers Federation chair and Secretary-General of the Moshavim Movement, Amit Ifrach said.
"Farmers and dairy farmers are the Iron Dome of the food security of the State of Israel. We will fight for our right to produce food security for the citizens of Israel and for the future of agriculture in the country. This is not a warning light. This is a real siren," Ifrach added.
"We will not allow Smotrich to destroy production that has existed for 100 years, nor to trample the livelihoods of the dairy farmers and farmers who sit on Israel's borders, cultivating it to the very last furrow," he continued.
"We will not allow him to trample and destroy about 400 dairy farms for a reform that will not lower prices for the consumer, but will create a dangerous dependence on imports."
"At a critical hour for the future of Israeli dairy and local agriculture as a whole, hundreds of dairy farmers and farmers voted with their feet against the dairy reform promoted by the finance minister and its clear meaning, the closure of 400 dairy farms on the borders and in the periphery," Israeli Cattle Breeders' Association CEO Dagan Yarel said.
"This reform will bring national damage that is difficult to imagine, without benefit to consumers. Beyond the elimination of Israeli dairy and absolute dependence on importing milk from hostile countries, we will see abandonment of land, thinning of settlement in strategic locations, and severe harm to the entire agricultural space," Yarel added.
"The Finance Ministry must come to its senses, remove the reform, and conduct substantive and transparent dialogue with all parties, before the realization of disastrous consequences."