Hashomer Hachadash – Young Israelis working the land
Hashomer Hachadash (The New Guard), a Zionist social-educational organization established in 2007, has launched a new organization to aid and promote young farmers, Agro-tech technology ventures and land development in the State of Israel called Eretz Noshevet. This new investment company, Eretz Noshevet (Hebrew for “Inhabited Land”), has already raised $20 miilion and it aims to strengthen the Israeli agricultural industry and return it to center stage, to expand Israel’s agricultural areas, and to motivate young men and women to connect with the land and see in agriculture a real and sustainable economic potential.
Israel has always been at the forefront of aggrotech since the early days of the first Zionist settlements. The country may now be known more as Startup Nation for all of its success in the high tech world. But until recently it was best known for its agricultural innovations. The pioneers of early Israel famously drained swamps, planted orange groves (oranges are not indigenous to the Middle East) and irrigated deserts to grow all sorts of crops. Israel was so successful at this that the country early on sent experts to help third world nations in Africa develop their own agriculture. Nowadays Israelis have combined their country’s history of agricultural innovation with its high tech innovation.
Eretz Noshevet will invest in profitable, sustainable and young agriculture, with the aim of motivating more young men and women to connect to the land and see agriculture as a real and existing economic potential in the light of global challenges. In this way Israelis will once again become connected to the physical land of Israel, just as the first generations of Zionist pioneers once did.
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The company began by locating ventures for the investment of young farmers, technology and Agro-tech ventures and land development. Today, the initiatives chosen by the investment committee will begin the pilot phase, in which they will receive personal and professional support, as well as an investment of up to half a million NIS per project.
More than 200 ventures submitted projects, and of the only 13 ventures passed the first stage of review. Among them: Biomic Agritech, which developed a new method for growing top-down model vegetables to save labor, Salicrop, which develops a unique biochemical treatment to improve seed durability, Mata, a company that developed A technique for preliminary thinning of the fruit in order to control the size and quantity of the fruit. At the beginning of November, members of the investment committee will meet and decide on the amount of investment for each project.
CEO and founder of Hashomer Hachadash Organization, Yoel Zilberman said, “In recent years, we have been mainly concerned with helping farmers in need and connecting the youth to Israel’s land. Now the present need is to raise the next generation of farmers in Israel. More than two years ago, Michael Eisenberg Michael began to fulfill the role of chairman, and we started thinking together about how we can create an infrastructure that can create food security in Israel. Both Covid and the war between Russia and Ukraine, raised the questions of food security. All these events accelerated the process of establishing the investment company. There are farmers here whose dream is to see them prosper and grow. This evening is meant to celebrate and kick it off and we believe that great things can be done together.”
Founded in 2007, HaShomer HaChadash works to ensure a stronger Jewish presence in the Negev and the Galilee, promote a sense of mutual responsibility among the Jewish people and uphold the Zionist ideals on which the State of Israel was founded. Through its pre-army program, volunteer guardsmen live on agricultural lands and patrol it from observation posts, preventing fires, theft, physical violence, and slaughtering of herds. Other programs include an agricultural volunteerism program for visitors from around the world, and a post-army program placing young Israelis with jobs in the agricultural sector. Today, HaShomer HaChadash engages over 38,500 volunteers working throughout 190,000 acres of land at 70 locations in the Negev and Galilee.
