At first, Adam Ganson was worried about starting an organic farm behind a gas station. And it wasn’t just the location – the abandoned land, which belongs to the Beersheba Municipality, was covered in 70 tons of rubble. While clearing it out by hand, Ganson could sometimes enlist the help of tractor drivers who had stopped for fuel. He learned to live with the gas station.

He and his wife, Moran, are co-directors of Earth’s Promise, an NGO in Beersheba that recently launched Gimel Produce, the country’s first and only commercial urban farm. The farm, named after the Gimmel neighborhood in which it resides, is an acre and a half of dusty land healthily blooming with everything from cabbage to kohlrabi, beetroot to tomato.