Monsoons in India are both a blessing and a curse. As the heavy rains pour down, they provide the season’s much-needed water for irrigating crops. But monsoons also wipe out entire villages. They cause mudslides, and contaminate potable water. Diseases fester and spread quickly. Now an Israeli company is using its expertise in water management to try to help Indians living in the Cherrapunjee region in the Indian state of Meghalaya – known as the wettest place on earth – to store rainwater and reforest.
Agri Projects, which is based in Petah Tikvah, combines clean technologies from about 15 major Israeli water companies like the Israeli firm, Plastro Irrigation, with other Israeli water management technologies to build clients in countries ranging from India, to the Ukraine, Thailand and Mexico, complete turn-key solutions in water management, and greenhouse construction and cultivation, offering people who need it most, the opportunity to grow food year round.
According to experts, the devastation during monsoon season in Cherrapunjee is particularly drastic. Clear-cutting of trees in the region has led to the disappearance of perennial springs, causing an acute water shortage despite heavy rains. David Rumnong Ashkenazy, the business head and India representative for Agri Projects welcomed a team of Israeli experts recently to India where they are starting the new water conservation project that will give communities in India the ability to be self-sustainable by showing them how to build, water, and sustain their own nurseries and plantations.
The company is also helping the people redevelop and reforest the land based on the Israeli Jewish National Fund model. “We have planned a holistic approach and steps will be taken wherein rainwater harvesting and a distribution system for livelihood, forestry and agriculture will be created together with the local experts for a phase-wise implementation,” Ashkenazy stated.
Building work on the $5 to $10 million dollar project, paid for by the Indian government, will start next month. The project will be a pilot that provides India with both the Israeli technology and know how for conserving water, and for growing and irrigating agricultural produce and trees. “This is the first pilot project,” says the company director Motti Sharon. “The plan is for them to use this as a model and multiply it around the province, with the power to improve the lives of hundreds of thousands of people,”
“We are not only transferring the technology solutions, but the know-how of how to manage these types of projects so they will be able to take care of themselves.” The new project will be the third in India for Agri Projects. The company is working on a post-harvest project there and is also running a citrus scheme set up in an Indian state just above Bangladesh. While the citrus tree project only benefits a few hundred people, the Israeli model in agricultural is catching on. “It is a small and growing project,” explains Sharon.
Agri Projects was founded in 2005 by Sharon who now runs a team of 25 experts, based all over the planet, some in remote locations. Born on a kibbutz in Israel, Sharon has over 25 years experience in managing irrigation systems, integrating agricultural projects, and managing and establishing water delivery and agriculture projects around the world. Agri Projects is a for-profit company which gives people around the world access to Israeli greenhouse and irrigation technology, but along the way, also helps make the planet a better place.
In Mexico, Agri Projects set up cooperative greenhouses with a local partner, and the Mexican government. The idea was to give Mexicans in rural locations Israeli high-tech greenhouse equipment, so that they could grow greenhouse produce hydroponically for the US market in the winter, when fresh produce in some parts is rare.
Including about 100 greenhouses over a five-hectare area, Agri Projects helped give a viable income to about 25 villages in the Yucatan region. “These are not just regular greenhouses, but small, very high-tech and fully computerized ones,” says Sharon, adding that in Mexico the company has also helped set up large farms. “If they run it in the right way for producing in the winter, they can get excellent prices for their produce in the US.”
Infrastructure was paid for by the Mexico government, with an investment from the US.Not yet active in America, Agri Projects has only just started negotiating with some clients there, but the opportunities for expansion are great. “The US is buying most of its greenhouse vegetables from Mexico and Canada. The percentage of what Americans produce is quite low and I don’t understand why they don’t make their own greenhouses to produce vegetables,” he stated. “This is one of our strengths in Mexico and the Ukraine: a very cost effective-price, which is an advantage,” he adds.
Growing tomatoes and raising dairy cows in 113 degree Fahrenheit is no easy feat, but over the last 30 years or so, Israeli agriculture technologies have been made to cope with whatever Mother Nature throws at them. It’s taken special fans, software, innovative dew collectors, drip irrigation, integrated pest control tactics, and state of the art greenhouses along with some “mother of invention” — Israeli style.
Old Macdonald would be proud: mainly as a means to survive in the hostile desert climate, Israeli agronomists, entrepreneurs, academics, and government agencies, started focusing on agriculture as a means to survive. The fruits of their labor will be on show next week at Israel’s international agriculture exhibition Agritech, from May 5 to 7 in Tel Aviv.
Over the years, Israel married pure science with know how and technology, and today the country exports more agriculture technologies than the fresh produce which inspired the innovations in the first place.
Three thousand international guests are expected to take part in next week’s exhibition — including 25 ministerial and 80 commercial delegations from around the world, as well as up to 15,000 Israelis. This year, as attendees pour over the 200 plus Israeli companies being showcased, they will also be able to take part in a world-class conference — Feeding the Future.
“First of all this conference is aimed at a foreign audience and visitors,” says Agritech co-chair Arie Regev, who is also the director of foreign relations for Israel’s Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development.
With the first Agritech exhibition in 2003, followed by another in 2006, this will be the third, and despite the slumping economy, Regev expects the same turn out as the last event which included visitors from over 100 countries. Israeli technologies cover just about “whatever you may think of,” “There will be irrigation technology, monitor control equipment, milking parlor equipment, assisting equipment, computers, monitors and software.” Among them, the main sub sections of the exhibition will be companies working in crops or with livestock. And while advanced agritech products no doubt come from other Western countries like Holland, Israel has a distinct advantage, says Regev.
“Israel is having, keeping and maintaining modern advanced agriculture in arid and semiarid conditions where water constraints are very imminent and strong, and where temperature and humidity is high,” he says. “Many of our solutions for crops or for livestock provide solutions to alleviate this problem, making growing crops and raising livestock, easier, better and more efficient. And, yes, more humane concerning animal husbandry.”
While he doesn’t want to pinpoint any particular “stars of the show,” what he can tell is that “for decades the Israeli agriculture industry has served as a laboratory for all these new technologies. Israel exports about $2 billion per annum on agritech products, almost double its fresh produce exports,” Regev says.
Exhibitors are all listed on the Agritech website and include well-known and lesser known names. Those featured are not only Israeli innovators, but also include solutions that Israelis have had a hand in distributing around the world, such as a new ground humidity-monitoring sensor developed for NASA’s spaceship Phoenix. The Israeli company Agrolan is distributing this particular product for use in agriculture.
On Mars the sensors were attached to robotic arms so the spacecraft could identify water. On Earth, Agrolan’s technology can measure soil humidity for farmers over large swathes of land. The collected data is transmitted to a specific website so that the software can control in real time the timing and the quantity of the irrigation, says Dan Meiri, the general manger of Agritech.
Agrolan, has been working on its own innovation as well. At the last Agritech conference, the company unveiled its dial-in weather stations to get reports of weather conditions back at the ranch, real time. Innovative solutions visitors will see include those launched by Shelef Laboratories, which has built a mobile lab for monitoring pests and pesticides applied to large commercial scale farms; or how about colored canvases developed by Israel’s Volcani Institute to cover your crops, filtering out certain kinds of light to disorient pests?
“Tal Ya Water technologies, a semi-startup, is still having money invested in it, but according to what I know, it’s a very nice company,” “They are collecting dew in a nice and simple way like from the time of the Nabateans — but their secret is the shape of sheets they are using and materials. They’ve waited a long time before they released their method.” The small company based in Emek Hefer will be featured at Agritech. “There is another unique company- a new system developed by Auto Agronom that is detecting each parameter on the leaves of plants. Not just how much water or fertilizer is there, but oxygen and carbon dioxide too,” adds Meiri.
Israelis like deal making, so Agritech will be a two for one event. Along with the expo, there will be a conference that brings together some of the world’s best minds in a bid to help tackle food shortage. The conference, says organizers, will be a unique and unprecedented occasion in which experts from Israel and worldwide, will join efforts to provide analyses for creating a more even equilibrium between supply and demand of quality food for all.
During the conference, registrants will see how Israel and its guests address feeding the world’s hungry. Among those offering their expertise will be Gilbert Houngbo, the Prime Minister of Togo, who is the former United Nations Development Program director for Africa, Dr. Tefera Deribew, Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development of the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia, Israel’s Chief Scientist of the Ministry of Agriculture – Dr. Yuval Eshdat, as well as Dr. Will Martin, a research manager for The World Bank.
Israel is active and well known for its work in agriculture and humanitarian affairs, and its agricultural technology transfer is important in developing countries. Some successes are Israel’s low-pressure irrigation systems in South Africa, a unique aquaculture enterprise in Uganda, an Israeli-made rural development project in Angola, or dairy farms that it has helped established in Eastern Europe.
In a press release announcing his visit to a Canadian university in Edmonton recently, Hebrew University of Jerusalem’s Prof. Ayal Kimhi, who will be a speaking at the conference, said that in Angola, an Israeli company is building villages as a means of production for farmers and a cooperative system. The project has been so successful that the region has experienced a boom in growth.
“In Israel, we have a foreign ministry and a ministry of agriculture working to specifically find ways for Israeli technology to help other countries,” said Kimhi, who is also Israel’s director of research, at the Center for Agricultural Economic Research. “Doing this kind of work helps to broaden people’s perception of Israel, seeing that it’s a superpower in technology, not just a land from the bible or what you see on TV.
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