When we arrived at the Canaan Palestine headquarters in Burqin, Palestine on a sunny Monday morning in February, the whole Canaan staff came outside to greet us with smiles and hugs. The five of us (David, Mia, Adam, Ariel, and I) were swept inside to Nasser’s office, where he poured us shots of thick, buttery Canaan olive oil, a welcome ritual for every guest who comes to visit. As I sipped, I was transported deep into the heart of the land—the oil grounded me, infused with the story of the place where we stood.
Earlier this year, a small delegation of Dr. Bronner’s staff including our CEO David Bronner, spent over two weeks in Israel and Palestine visiting suppliers, distributors and NGO partners in the region. (Read David’s perspective on the trip.) One of our first stops was in the Northern part of the Occupied West Bank, the home of Canaan Palestine. We walked the land with the farmers, celebrating all the new trees planted and mourning all the land that has been lost to the occupation. We drank Arabic coffee and played with children in the fields. We planted seedlings with Combatants for Peace in a hopeful act of repopulating the land, knowing millions of trees have been destroyed by settlers. We sat under the shade of Sharifa, a 5,000-year-old olive tree who still stands proudly under the shadow of the apartheid wall looming on the ridge above. Despite the advancing pace of the occupation, sumud—the felt sense of rooted resilience in community—somehow still prevails.
I feel all the same feels every time I watch the Land of Canaan, a new award-winning documentary about the history and heritage of olive farming in Palestine. It chronicles the creation of the Palestinian fair trade olive oil industry —a story that also lives in every bar and bottle of Dr. Bronner’s soap.
Palestinians and their ancestors have been farming olive trees for 5,000 years in this land, resulting in a flourishing ecosystem based on thousands of years of ecological knowledge handed down from generation to generation. Today, Canaan Palestine and the Palestinian Fair Trade Association work with and support the livelihoods of over 2,000 family farmers each year across 50+ villages in the West Bank.
In 2006, Dr. Nasser Abufarha, a Palestinian anthropologist, began putting the pieces together to realize his vision to bring fair trade practices and principles to olive farming to his homeland. At the time, the industry was in shambles with pricing so low that Palestinian olive farmers could not make a living. Nasser worked with farmers to transform the industry using fair trade and regenerative organic practices, bringing global recognition for the excellent quality of Palestinian olive oil, and setting new and higher pricing benchmarks.
Around the same time, Dr. Bronner’s was on a mission to ensure the major ingredients in its products were certified organic and fair trade. David Bronner connected with Nasser, and Dr. Bronner’s quickly became Canaan’s largest customer. Twenty years later, both companies have grown significantly, and still to this day, Canaan provides the vast majority of the olive oil Dr. Bronner’s uses in our soap. (We also source from Sindyanna of Gallilee, a Palestinian and Jewish cooperative in Nazareth, Israel, and Yoshra, a small family farm in Yokne’am, Israel—a story you can read more about.)
Naturally, Dr. Bronner’s was proud and honored to support the development of Land of Canaan because the story of the farmers, the trees and the land is so important to us. Directed by Maggie Lemere, Land of Canaan is what she describes as a love letter to the olive trees. It is shot so beautifully that it transports you to a picnic blanket, right under the trees, breaking bread with the farmers and their families, and celebrating the harvest alongside them. In our media landscape today, it is rare to see a window into the joy, the community resilience and the indestructible spirit—the sumud—of Palestine.
Now that Land of Canaan is out in the world, the film is winning awards at festivals and engaging thousands of people at screenings globally. To see the screening schedule and learn more about Land of Canaan, follow them on Instagram at @landofcanaanfilm or visit their Linktree.