No other single country – certainly not one as young and as tiny as Israel – has contributed more breakthroughs in this area than Israel.

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Since the 1950s, Israelis have not only been finding miraculous ways to green their own desert but have shared their discoveries far and wide through channels including MASHAV, Israel’s Agency for International Development Cooperation at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

ISRAEL21c has highlighted dozens of food-related advances pioneered by Israelis. Here are 12 major ways Israel helps feed the world.

 

1. Drip irrigation

Probably no other advancement has been quite as significant. While the concept of drip irrigation existed well before Israeli statehood, it was revolutionized by Israeli water engineer Simcha Blass, who serendipitously discovered that a slow and balanced drip led to remarkable growth. He created tubing that slowly released water where it was most effective, and in 1965 Kibbutz Hatzerim built a whole new industry, Netafim, based on his invention.

Israeli drip and micro-irrigation solutions rapidly spread worldwide. The newest models are self-cleaning and maintain uniform flow rate regardless of water quality and pressure.

Just one recent example of how this method has impacted food supply in foreign countries is Tipa, literally “Drop, ” an Israeli-developed kit that has allowed 700 farming families in Senegal to reap crops three times a year instead of just once, even on infertile land.

Tipa is “a simple drip irrigation system that uses gravity when there is no water supply or water pressure coming to rural areas, ” MASHAV’s Ilan Fluss told ISRAEL21c. The organization has similar activities in Kenya,  South Africa,  Benin and Niger.

 

tipa-kit