“The recent rise in the cost of living has obliged us to go back to farming to be able to sustain our families,” one woman told Arab News on the condition her name would not be publicized.

She said she is growing fruit and vegetables for her family’s own consumption and what’s left she takes to the local market.

The return to subsistence farming has been gradual, but today fewer foreign laborers can be seen tilling the fields as locals take the ergonomic decision to do the work themselves. In the past, farming was a common activity where both men and women worked the fields, but in recent decades, the region faced intense religious pressure to end the local longstanding tradition of men and women both working in the fields.

One woman farmer, who identified herself only as Itra, said it was a combination of economic prosperity and religious lectures about mingling of the sexes. Women preachers, she said, would lecture them on the necessity to cover themselves completely while working the farm.

“Many women just abandoned their farms and stayed home,” she said. “Then the lack of physical activity caused them a number of diseases, including diabetes, arthritis and high blood pressure.”

Um Saleh said she used to farm when she was raising eight children alone after he husband died.

“When my children graduated and got jobs, I did not find the need for farming any longer but now with prices soaring and cost of living skyrocketing, I had to go back to farming after many years,” she said.

Arab News, which made a tour of the farms, noted that those of women who came back to work looked conservative, wearing niqab (veils) and using their mobile phones to communicate with the other farmers.