MidnightCall Magazine
In this issue:
- Hear theWord of the Lord — By Thomas Lieth
- FirstThessalonians 3 and the Rapture — By Dr. Ron J. Bigalke Jr.
- Popular Prophecy:CheckingDogmaTwice — By Wilfred Hahn
News From Israel MagazineIn this issue:
- Why Jerusalem is Jewish — By Arno Froese
- ON THE HORIZON:
- Analysis: Birthright Needs to Transform on Larger Scale
- Israel Praises Turkish Authority for Preventing Hezbollah Attack
- Relationship with American Jews Is Changing
- A Festival of Discrimination—Funded by the EU
- The Cyrus Cylinder
Agritech 2009 Aims to Help Feed the World
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.
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.
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.
Israeli technologies cover just about “whatever you may think of,” Agritech co-chair Arie Regev tells ISRAEL21c. “There will be irrigation technology, monitor control equipment, milking parlor equipment, assisting equipment, computers, monitors and software.”
“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,” Regev 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.”
Space age and tested on Mars
One solution that Israelis have had a hand in distributing around the world is 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.
Innovative solutions 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,” Meiri tells ISRAEL21c. “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.”
“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.
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 Israel, we have a foreign ministry and a ministry of agriculture working to specifically find ways for Israeli technology to help other countries,” said Hebrew University of Jerusalem’s Prof. Ayal 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 CNN,” said Kimhi.
www.israel21c.org, 30 April 2009
The statement, “superpower in technology” seems vastly exaggerated, but it is not. Israel has the highest educated work force in the world. No one can compete with Israel when it comes to PhDs per capita. Thus we see again, Israel is unique among all the nations of the world. This is not a surprise, because Israel’s destiny is prophesied in Deuteronomy 15:6: “For the LORD thy God blesseth thee, as he promised thee: and thou shalt lend unto many nations, but thou shalt not borrow; and thou shalt reign over many nations, but they shall not reign over thee.”