As India discovered, Israel is leading the way with precision irrigation by getting to the ‘root’ of the problem

By David E. Kaplan

The UAE’s historic deal with Israel made the news like an earthquake broadcasting to the world and the people of the region that Israel is not an enemy but a friend and potential partner.

Its intentions are not to invade but trade.

And proving that the agreement has the potential to foster real co-existence between the peoples of both countries, Israeli pop star Omer Adam has reportedly been invited to perform in the UAE. Adam is one of Israel’s most popular singers, with his single  -“Shnei Meshugaim” – viewed over 61 million times on YouTube.

Cultural encounters are always the proverbial “hechsher” – the absolute approval.

Even if there are those who refuse to recognise a transforming Middle East landscape, the UAE-Israel deal is a call to look to the future rather than the past.  Only earlier this month, it was seen how to be a prisoner of the past can prove existentially devasting as Lebanon has so tragically discovered.

India, which publicly kept a distance from Israel until the late 1980’s, has long changed its position and is benefiting enormously from Israel’s expertise in so many diverse fields.

In fact, quite literally – in the “field”!

Israeli company Netafim signed this August, a $85 million deal to provide irrigation solution to 35,000 farmers in India. Founded in 1965, today the company specialises in end-to-end solutions from the water source to the plant root and offers a variety of irrigation and greenhouse projects. One of the world’s largest irrigation companies, Netafim produces drippers, dripperlines, sprinklers and micro-emitters. 

Back to the Roots

Precision irrigation feeds the plant, not the soil. That is a big deal  because delivering water and nutrients straight to the roots, the farmer not only reduces costs but also cultivates higher yields of healthier crops.  This is why famers in India are turned onto the deal.

The agreement involves the construction of Netafim’s irrigation systems for three large projects that cover 66 villages on 123,500 acres (50,000 hectares area) in the state of Karnataka in southwest India. The two-year project will include technical and agronomic support for five years. 

Netafim will also train the Indian farmers to operate the advanced systems.

Field of Dreams

The impact of this deal will lead to a wider range of crops being cultivated to include  – onion, chili pepper, corn, peanuts, beans and sunflowers.

The name of the game is partnership, and to arrive at this deal, Netafim joined forces with the Indian Infrastructure company, MEIL (Megha Engineering and Infrastructure Limited), which together will execute these projects to fruit’ion.

This is the way to do business and help people regionally.

“Especially in these days of global crisis,” said President and CEO of Netafim Gaby Miodownik. “The uniqueness of these projects is in their community model, which along with local government involvement, enables a huge number of farmers and villages to improve their livelihoods. The Indian government has always been extremely supportive of the agricultural sector, and now more than ever this support is important for securing the economic stability of local farmers and food security in the country.”

Deploying NetBeatTM systems for digital farming, enables real-time control of the irrigation systems using cloud technologies and allows access from any mobile device. “We intends to expand the community irrigation project model to other countries characterized by a large number of small farmers,” says Miodownik.

Changing Climate

Interestingly, despite my native South Africa distancing itself diplomatically from Israel, it paradoxically remains commercially engaged, notably in agriculture and hydrology.

To this point, Netafim is in the vanguard!

If there are some in the ruling ANC government proving cerebrally sluggish,  not so the country’s president Cyril Ramaphosa who in October 2019, lauded Israel’s entrepreneurship at the Women in Business Conference saying:

“Israel is leading by leaps and bounds, and they are actually innovative in a number of sectors of the economy, in agriculture, in maritime, and a number of other areas. They have shown that they can lead, and we can learn a lot from what they do. I find this very interesting and would like to know more.”

Only a few months before Ramaphosa’s praise of Israel admitting that South Africa would benefit by closer cooperation, Netafim South Africa in June was the platinum sponsor of the 2019 SABI (South African Irrigation Institute) congress where the theme was ‘Climate of Change and Opportunity’. Addressing the Congress, Michael Esmeraldo of Netafim South Africa said:

“Modern farming is not always only about new technology, high-tech machines and computers. A modern approach is also about making more efficient use of the resources that we have available. We have to use water, fertilizer and other inputs efficiently to get optimal benefit per unit of input.”

More specifically:

 “a tree does not know how it receives water, it merely requires a certain amount of water daily depending on the phenological stage, age of the tree and the climate.”

What is important:

 “is to find the right fit for each specific situation, in other words choosing the correct irrigation system that will work in synergy with the resources you have available.”

This is Israel’s expertise!

Yet again, South African commerce and diplomacy travel in opposite directions. The ANC government response to the Israel-UAE normalisation deal  – whose main state opponents were predictably Iran and Turkey, both a threat to regional peace- was “one of concern”.

In a SAZF (South African Zionist Federation) press release, its national chairman, Rowan Polovin, exposed the absurdity of South Africa’s position on the deal following it being well received by respected Arab countries Egypt, Oman, and Bahrain as well as South Africa’s major BRICS partners, India and China.

Proving once again how his country is characteristically out of step on the world stage, Polovin wrote:

“We encourage the South African government, to show leadership through positive re-engagement with Israel in ways that would by no means diminish her support for the Palestinians.”

Noting that further normalisation deals are likely to emerge over the coming months between Israel and other Arab and Muslim states, he concluded: “South Africa should be ready to welcome and encourage these positive developments in the interests of peace and stability in the region.”

Rather than “a stab in the back” as described by some detractors of the deal, it is more like “a shot in the arm” in the pursuit of changing the landscape to improves the lives of all in the region.

Ask the Indian farmers using Israeli technology!

To take a page from Netafim’s history of success:

“We’re farmers first and innovators second. We started in 1965, in the Negev desert in Israel, trying to grow crops in desert soil. So we know what it’s like to farm in extreme conditions. That struggle taught us how to combine precision irrigation, agronomic expertise and relentless innovation to help farmers grow more of any crop, in any climate, with less.”

Learn from the experts.

While South Africa advocates a “pullback”,  most of the world will be following India and the United Arab Emirates to “partner”.

While the mission of Lay of the Land (LotL) is to provide a wide and diverse perspective of affairs in Israel, the Middle East and the Jewish world, the opinions, beliefs and viewpoints expressed by its various writers are not necessarily ones of the owners and management of LOTL but of the writers themselves.  LotL endeavours to the best of its ability to credit the use of all known photographs to the photographer and/or owner of such photographs