Mango farmers around the Kinneret area say this year’s harvest has collapsed, with losses of more than 80% compared with last year. Alex Kaplan, 50, the orchards manager for Kibbutz Kinneret, said he harvested 700 tons of mangoes in 2025 but expects no more than 120 tons this year. He called the situation a “catastrophe” and said veteran growers could not remember such a sharp decline.
Kibbutz Kinneret cultivates about 2,500 dunams of orchards, including mangoes, almonds, avocados, lychees, bananas and dates. Roughly 250 dunams are mango trees, a crop grown there for about 50 years and considered one of the kibbutz’s most successful. Kaplan said 2025 brought record quantities but disastrously low revenues, because oversupply drove prices to about one shekel per kilo, far below production and harvesting costs.
This year, however, the problem is weather. Kaplan said March temperatures were far below the more than 20 degrees Celsius needed for mango flowering and pollination, sometimes dropping to around 10 degrees. The cold reduced insect activity, prevented proper fertilization and harmed fruit set. By April, many blossoms remained bare and some fruits developed abnormally without pits. Such fruit stays small, cracks on the tree and has no commercial value. Kaplan estimates damage at several million shekels and says many other farmers will be hit similarly.
Robert Kennedy Amrusi, 58, a mango grower from Moshava Migdal, said his area may produce only 30% of last year’s crop and described the season as possibly the worst ever. He said last year growers left hundreds of tons unpicked because prices were too low, after European boycotts and Houthi disruption of shipping routes hurt exports and flooded the domestic market. This year, he said, rain during flowering and very low temperatures ruined the crop. Anat Leshem, CEO of Tzema Avocado packing house, said it will handle its smallest mango volume in at least a decade, with only a third of its usual annual amount, and expects higher prices. She added that while about half of Israel’s mango crop is usually exported, this year more fruit will likely go to the local market because of anticipated stronger prices and a stronger shekel, while export markets will be preserved for future seasons.
