Last month, China’s Yuanda Enterprise Group bought Israeli company AutoAgronome Israel Ltd for $20 million. The Israeli company produces smart irrigation and fertilisation systems for more than a dozen countries. Here, JMA’s Shelley Glaser investigates the origins and the successes of the Jewish state’s world-famous drip irrigation system.
By Shelley Glaser
In Israel, crops of fruit, vegetables and grains are grown in the desert. Though it may seem like a mirage to those who visit, it is not. It is a reality, thanks to the pioneers who came to settle in the arid and semi-arid land of Israel in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Since political independence in 1948, the area of Israel’s cultivated land has increased from 1,650 km2 to 4,300 km2 . Agricultural production has increased three times more than population growth.
How was this achieved? In the 1930s in the middle of the Negev Desert, Israeli water engineer Simcha Blass made an important discovery. He noticed that one tree on his land seemed to grow much faster than the surrounding ones. The reason? A water pipe had sprung a leak right next to the tree and was nourishing the soil around it, drop by drop. Blass started experimenting and eventually came up with the drip irrigation system.
The concept is simple. Instead of using sprinkler systems that soak entire plots of land indiscriminately, the drip-irrigation system releases water into the earth drop by drop, only where it’s needed. In 1959, Blass introduced the first model – a plastic hose punctured with several small holes – and commissioned a kibbutz to produce and distribute it. Six years later, the newly-founded company Netafim introduced low-volume drip irrigation to the world. Today, the system is used in over a hundred countries, including places like Peru, Senegal, Egypt, Russia, Mexico, and the US. The reason for its success is because, compared to a sprinkler system, a drip irrigation system uses half the amount of water.
Sandra Postel of National Geographic’s Freshwater Initiative says that as the world’s population increases and water shortages become more prevalent, finding ways of getting more “crop per drop” to meet food needs is among the most urgent of challenges. She says that drip irrigation, which delivers water directly to the roots of plants in just the right amounts, can double or triple water productivity – boosting productivity and saving water, therefore providing more “crop per drop.”
As a result of the drought in Israel in 1990 and 1991, water supply to farmers was reduced by more than fifty per cent to deal with the shortage, and although farmers were adversely affected in the short-run, they were able to adapt through substantial investment in highly efficient computerised drip irrigation technologies that reduced their demand in the long-run. So, for example, between the years 2000 and 2005, the fruit sector – although experiencing an average of thirty-five per cent cut in water – increased its production by an incredible forty-two per cent.
Dr Daniel Hillel, an Israeli water and soil scientist and founding member of the Sde Boker kibbutz in the Negev desert, was named the 2012 World Food Prize Laureate for his pioneering research in the development of drip irrigation techniques. The prize is awarded to individuals who have advanced human development by improving the quality, quantity or availability of food in the world.
He has worked in collaboration with the United Nations and the World Bank to apply and disseminate improved methods of irrigation. He explained in an interview with the Wall Street Journal that the technology must be constantly innovated and tailored to the crop- types in question. For example, solar powered irrigation technology has now been developed. And the plastic tubing material used in the systems that is an integral part of the system is sometimes substituted by ceramic, as it is more porous.
Drip irrigation has become, arguably, the world’s most valued innovation in agriculture. Growers are increasingly becoming aware of how precious water is as a resource, how its efficient usage and management can assist agriculture, and how drip irrigation technology can positively affect society as a whole. Drip irrigation has truly become, and will continue to be, a benefit to us all.
