Agriculture in the Negev: Today's Desert Pioneers

foreign [Music] a land of searing heat dry Barrow and yet ruggedly beautiful a place where Abraham Isaac and Jacob walked where Moses and the children of Israel wandered and allotted to the tribes of Judah and Shimmer today it makes up sixty percent of the modern state of Israel and it is still a land of Wonders [Music] [Applause] my name is Professor Simon Barack from bangorian University and I'm standing here in midrashid Ben Gurion overlooking the spectacular Wilderness of Zinn and I'm standing right by the graves of Israel's first Prime Minister David ben-gorian and his wife

Paula and this is really fitting because it was Ben gurion's vision settle and develop the Negev and make the Desert Bloom and Ben Gorn is often quoted as saying that it is in the Negev that the creativity and pioneering Spirit of Israel will be tested I grew up on the stories of the early Zionist Pioneers who came to the land of Israel to set up a Jewish homeland establish the kibutsim and the moshevim and set out to cultivate the desolate land and grow crops in places such as the Negev where nobody thought they could be

grown nowadays we hear a lot about Israel's new Pioneers in high-tech in cyber security in computer software but what about agriculture and what about agriculture in the Negev can we find that Spirit of innovation that David Ben guren envisioned and what about the stories behind today's desert pioneers good [Music] one of bangorion's Dreams was to set up an Oxford University of the Negev which would attract Israeli scientists to carry out the research to promote sustainable development of the Negev and dry lands all over the world so what better place to begin our journey then bangorian

universities Jacob Lau Stein institutes for Desert research on the sterebor care campus we're going to meet later on some of the amazing scientists who are pushing forward the frontiers of desert agriculture but right now let's go and meet our first desert farmer [Music] foreign [Music] ER for many years what actually is this jojoba plant that we can see well it it's a plant that came from the United States or Southern United States Mexico and was cultivated in Israel about 30 years ago the dunamis 1000 dunams it's a approximately 100 acres that's a large field yes

yes it's a medium size in Israel scale it's a medium it's a medium-sized and um what is the jacoba plant produce the plant produce seeds and from those seeds we produce oil and what direction is the oil used for what is the main Market mostly for the Cosmetics uh it's mostly for the Cosmetics Market that's right so why is it so good for Cosmetics it's a place's whale oil oh well that's a good reason yes it's kind of a green oil and it's the closest oil to our Nature body oils this is the advantage of

this soil I understand from what you've told me in the past that Israel is a real major player in this market what is the size or what is Israel's proportion of the market in the two years from now when the plantation like that will produce seeds we're gonna be approximately 50 percent of the market worldwide worldwide that's huge yes it is so I still trying to understand why Israel has captured so much of the market is it just that other places are not growing it they don't know how to grow it they're not growing it

as well well the reason is that we change the technique of of growing the jojoba we end this research of course everything is combined with the farmers so this is the reason that we got so so good good yes well jojoba become very popular crop in Israel recently and very popular in the desert area we're lucky enough we have a cell and water as brackish water in the groundwater that we can pump and use for irrigation jojoba plants are very very tolerant to salinity and we're trying to check different levels of salinity and how it

affects the growth of the plant in different parameters like photosynthesis through development shoe development and at the end the yield of the plant so far we didn't find any significant effect between the different salinity level which is good for Farmers because then we can irrigate the plant with less expensive water with high salinity and we hope to get the same yield as with those Serenity this is a very large initiative that involved many institutes around Israel we have the Bengal University r d research and development facility in Ramat Negev which hosts this experiment and with

by using the cell and water that's available here in the desert areas we can grow this plant and encourage Farmers to grow this plant and make money out of the oil that they produce from this crop ceramia I see that the plants here are quite small how old are the plants here the plants here about now 9 9 months old and they're gonna be as high as three meters wow yes you want to see it yeah yeah I'd love to see it so come on [Music] so Simon you as you can see over there there's

a plantation that's about two and a half years old and where we're standing now is a 30 almost 30 years old plantation so as you can see the height yeah this is huge cerami from our past conversations I know that you were actually born a city boy so yes I was born in Ramadan a real city boy yes and my family I haven't actually has had in a family because everybody were killed in the Holocaust so there's a family in moshav that actually almost adopt me and this is was my first introduction to agriculture and

from then I wanted to study agriculture so I went to high school in pakistana the agriculture school and from then to the Army I wasn't a power Troopers and came to the devil care and started hugging each other and you what is it you love about agriculture well it's the most exciting occupation I think there is it's not actually an occupation it's a way of living and here in the desert especially in the desert to make the Desert Bloom this is how you do it [Music] our next stop is a moshav just a few meters

from the Egyptian border that is named after a site or sites in southern Canaan and the kingdom of Judah and Moses sent messages from Kadesh unto the king of Edom thus saith thy brother Israel thou knowest all the hardships that have befallen us how the Egyptians oppressed us and when We Cried unto the Lord he heard our voice and brought us out of Egypt and behold we are in Kadesh a city in the uttermost of thy border the modern Kadesh panel is onto over 40 we are going to meet us who has decided to settle

here and grow exotic mushrooms [Music] I grew up in kiraticon which is near in the center of Israel so what actually inspired you to become a farmer and to become a farmer in the negeved um foreign [Music] [Music] [Music] foreign foreign [Music] so how did you get this idea of growing exotic mushrooms we met this guy that told us about the Exotic mushrooms and he told us that there isn't any exotic mushrooms that are not being imported from Europe or from the East and we thought that it can be a new agriculture to do in

this area in addition to that we flew to the Netherlands in order to see a little bit about the field and to learn more about it and we met a guy in the Netherlands after we met him we understood that he is one of the leading people in Europe and the Exotic mushroom field and he told us everything about it and we were very excited to hear about it and we said okay so we're going back to Israel and we're going to build our farm and grow exotic mushrooms and we're gonna be the first one

to grow mushrooms in the Negev ever kind of pioneers so we decided that this one we wanted to do and we came back to Israel and to pass build everything by himself we are marketing our mushrooms we have a couple of days that we are driving to the center in order to sell our mushrooms but we are in contact with some of the big supermarkets in Israel the ones that are more organic or more healthy supermarkets that buy from us so these are organic mushrooms yeah yeah they are yeah okay um beside the fact that

we want to be farmers [Music] we have decided to build our house in the desert here in Canada so in a couple of months we're supposed to move in and this these are our roots and in the desert in kadeshane give we feel connected to this to this place [Music] so we're now deep in the southern Negev region and we are on our way towards mits peramon and we're going to visit an agricultural industry which has really flourished in recent years all over this part of the Negev and it's where Ben Gurion University researchers have

had a real impact and I have to say I'm really looking forward to this one and you'll see why later so here I am in the absolute middle of nowhere and what can we find here Vineyards in the desert [Music] so we're about to meet my close friend and colleague Professor Aaron fight from the Jacob bloustein institutes for Desert research Aaron made aliara in 1992 from Italy and here's a plant by a chemist and the leading scientist in the agrotechnology and biotechnology of desert viticulture so viticulture is the production of wine grapes so let's go

ahead and meet him hey hello so it's amazing to be in a Vineyard in the middle of the desert Aaron why grow grapes in the desert well the desert has been used for a wine production thousands of years and here are the the the good things about desert viticulture are the fact that we have nice solar radiations moreover we don't have a large amount of humidity which helps plants not to be in Attack by pathogens like fungi and you can control very precisely the amount of irrigation each plant or each cultivar gets including also the

amount of fertilizers the plant get so this is drip irrigation drip irrigation which is an Israeli technology which netafim is Distributing throughout the world to most of the farmers here grow grapes for the major wineries in the center and north of the countries or do they actually have their own wineries yeah I would say it's both you have both a small Wineries and Farmers that try to make a living out of ecotourism with a small production like 2 000 bottles a year and you have then the big wineries from the center and the north that

are actually growing their grapes here because they want the characteristics a characteristic Aroma and fragrance of of the desert of the desert wines are there any Israeli varieties like Israeli native varieties that are grown in Israel for wine so viticulture in the past stopped when the Ottoman Empire arrived to the region so it was quite a long time ago and since then there was no real wine production in Israel until modern times so there are Israeli Vines found in the wild and now they were collected by Dr El yoshif Drury from Ariel University in a

nice collection mainly for a breeding purpose so Aaron we're going to be seeing you later so for now we're going to say bye and we have with us one of your students who's just at the end of his PhD and we're going to talk to him now about some of his uh work that he's doing in this actual Vineyard how did you get interested in winemaking well I went to New Zealand after my Army service for my big trip and I was hitchhiking in the middle of nowhere when a Vineyard owner picked me up after

a long ride together he offered me to stay with him and help him out in the field and I did it was short but it inspired me for the future so you're saying just by chance you're in the middle of New Zealand definitely and just happens that a Vineyard owner comes to pick you up and that is what inspired you yeah to to go into wine making sorry amazing so you came back to Israel and you did uh your first degree back to Israel I did my bachelor's in Biochemistry and food science went to work

in a winery in the Golan wow and then I straight headed to France to do my masters in viticulture and inology and then you came back to Israel to do your PhD yes this was the plan to learn my uh the knowledge there and implement it here in Israel so now I know that you've been doing a lot of research in your PhD can be you tell us a little bit about what you've been doing yeah well it's not a secret that warm climate viticulture is associated with the inferior wines but we can change the

climate so what we what we can change is maybe the fruit microclimate and this we can do by mainly regulating the amount of sunlight penetrating the fruit so what you're talking about is the actual climate around each individual Berry yeah exactly the microclimate the conditions that are sensed by each Berry most of the most of what we did is apply shading Nets and see how it affects the the great composition and we have state of the art metabolic profiling techniques to really see all the compounds that are in the grape that are involved in the

quality of the worm and now we're also collaborating with the local winery working on a new trellis that will create this partial shading by the leaves and not by shadiness so you're actually going to cause the plants to grow to shade their own berries exactly well it's amazing I believe that Israel can become a leader in the adaptation of viticulture to climate change Norm thank you so much for coming to speak to us it's been amazing to hear what you're doing and I believe that you and Aaron are going to take us now to what

I think is going to be one of my favorite parts of the day so why don't you lead on okay let's go [Music] oh wow Aaron this is absolutely amazing what a surprise absolutely amazing so uh what are we drinking well it is a Merlot from a little aged from 2012 from Karma of that a local Winery excellent excellent Aaron what can be better than sitting in the middle of the Native desert drinking wine from the Negev crime yes [Music] the central hour of our region where we are headed comprises six percent of Israel's land

yet it contains only about 0.04 percent of Israel's population three and a half thousand people who were spread out among five moshevim and two Community settlements that were founded from the 1960s onwards most of the residents make their living from agriculture and thanks to their creativity and daring combined with scientific research the farmers of the Arava have succeeded under conditions that may have deterred many others [Music] meet Mayan and Ariel kittron who found right here in moshav Edan but where is here exactly well I'm standing right next to the Jordanian border if you look behind

me we can see no man's land and if I just walk a few more meters I can walk right into Jordan there's no border fence here no border markings and I'm under the watchful eye of a Jordanian border post and it really makes me think of the original Pioneers who'd set up these communities right by what was then an enemy border [Music] tell me how this all started how did you come to be in the Arava and growing peppers 18 years ago and I were already married and he told me that he wants to be

a farmer we both come from kibutim in the northern part of Israel and the place that we could start our own Farm was here in the Ava it was still supported by the government and this is why we ended up here what does it drew you to the Arava we like the desert yeah yeah we can grow summer crops during the winter time with low energy demand this is the advantage that we have here and what is it you love about doing agriculture I don't know I I feel the the the the the the land

I feel the the crops it's I like to to see it coming up and everything is successful and I hate to pick actually yeah I had to harvest so what Market are you growing the peppers for we're exporting mainly uh to Europe England and Russia these are our markets overseas and the local market here in Israel I would like you to try one of our Peppers oh I would very much like to do that yes wow look at that pepper that's a beautiful pepper hmm just delicious so should we go and see the tomatoes let's

go in the Negev Desert we have several abiotic stresses such as high temperature in the summer low temperature in the in the winter and also the irrigation water that we have here is mostly saline water so since we are in a research and development center and we are working together with the farmers we can produce even more yield than other places with drip irrigation with the net house with the trellising system and with other technologies that all together when you put them all together you produce the best yield the best quality and the best taste

okay Simon so we've heard you here to see something very little and very special okay this is the tonberry Tomato which is the tiniest tomato wow that's really small yeah it is look at that wow that really really is small isn't it so what would you use this for you just put it in the salad you don't need to cut it's very easy it's very fresh wow so this is going to go like to chefs and as well in restaurants and uh yeah also for the regular cups customers and is anybody else growing this no

we are the we have the the exclusive rice it's exclusive right in Israel in Israel and uh are there only one type of variety or do you have like different colors there's the red one and there's also the yellow one by the way the other one is tastier really yeah so I could try the red one and then try a yellow one I'm gonna well I'm gonna try this now hmm we're very sweet they're really good I recommend to try the yellow one the yellow ones they are better okay I think so oh we have

some yellow ones here wow there you go so I'm going to taste this one no that is good that is really good so when did you what gave you the idea of bringing these uh to to Israel I'll drive in a few places in the world to to look for something else to grow in the for the Israeli markets and one day I was in Netherland I met a Deutsche that he go he developed the Turnberry so it's called a tonbury yeah okay that's a cute name yeah so this is just one of your tomato

crops right because I see a round but there's quite a lot of other Tomatoes as well so this is the this is just something that's beginning yeah yeah it's the first year it's only on a small scale to check the market to fill the market and in this greenhouse we have unique and different types of tomatoes that we can check the reaction in the local market for them so Ariana mayam what is it about life in the aravad that you love so much do you have a family that you've raised here yeah we do have

we have three kids uh the life here is very simple they they don't have a lot of places to go and hang around with the kids and with the friends it's more of going out to the desert and enjoy and enjoying themselves yeah what type of person do you think is really attracted to here is it somebody who's looking for quality of life is it Zionism is it um settling the Negev I think it's basically a combination of all what you mentioned and very unique people come here to live in the other but I have

to say that there are many of the kids that grew here in the Ava are coming back and building them Ariel and Mayan thank you so much for taking the time I know you have a very busy day and thank you so much for uh showing us around the farm crazy [Music] hey what's up hey Simon how you doing I'm great thank you for coming thank you so much for having us here and I can't wait to see what you've got to show us come on in let's go wow a suffer this is astonishing you're

growing Corals in the middle of the desert um farming calls because I'm in uh Farm region agriculture region and causes you know are symbiotics with a algae that does photosynthesis and this is what I usually have during the year is a sunlight and that's why I try to grow corals how many types of corals do you grow imagine around 50 different species are they are they from all over the world they come from the Far East most of them some from Kenya some from Australia even so I have to ask you the million dollar question

what are you growing the corals for mainly the market my market is that the biomedical companies bone grafting there's a skeletons corals very similar to our skeleton how does it actually work they use the call as a glue or a scaffold meaning that the body can actually seize it as its own and will replace it so this is uh one of the products that are coming from the corals this product here is uh for redoing bone grafting after tooth was pulled out for his Dental Market what are the fish for Fair part of the holistic

size of the the system they add nutrients a little bit they take some of the allergies out they move the water different directions so if I can see uh there's some special type of lighting here what what is the that lighting well that lighting is sunlight that this is what we have here in the desert mostly and that the cores are obviously photosynthetic most of the energy they they need comes from the Sun and that uh tubes will reflect the sunlight from outside and and mind you again the the lightning regime that I need is

a 12 hours daylight and 12 hours of night so just to pay less electricity or no electricity I have those uh solo tubes I understand you've also got um some solar power as well which you use yes I uh I'll have some solar panels quite a lot of them so during the day a lot of the energy that I use here actually come from uh energy that I produce so we can actually say that I can think that there's three ways in fact you're very environmentally friendly one you're using the solar tubes two that you're

using solar power and three you're not going into the ocean and cutting away uh and destroying all the corals you're actually growing them here I I am that's right yeah so what's up how did you think about this absolutely crazy idea of growing Corals in the middle of the desert I've been doing it for 10 years I I still think it's crazy idea this is uh where I was born and raised I've been away for uh sometimes came back as a lighting designer and I thought of how to take what I know into the region

that which is all farming agriculture so I started looking into different things of uh implementing LEDs into the forming this and this and that made me think of this idea I thought if I can grow it I'll be the only one lucky me that's forming with the potential I know you the only one who does this to my knowledge the way I do it yes foreign well that was unbelievable Corals in the desert who knew we're heading to our final stop now and we're going to meet Ron Epstein who owns one of the most successful

ornamental fish farms in Israel [Music] so fish in the deserts run what's that all about it's swimming Upstream but there is only one advantage we are far away from any natural habitat like river lake or Sea and the isolation for main native or natural pathogen is a very big Advantage so actually we are very famous for our disease-free and for our biosecurity unlike Farms that close to Natural fish habitat right how did this all start you said to me you were from Tel Aviv I'm from Ramadan and this is my hobby since I was a

child I came down to the araba because that time there was a huge support in the help and that's how I built Amazing Farm one of the most successful Farm worldwide worldwide around this is an absolutely incredible operation you've got here um so what type of fish are you growing actually we grow on a metal fish and we grow a freshwater prawns Malaysian prawns the the prawns we export to Far East China Vietnam Malaysia the ornamental we produce mainly for the Western countries like West Europe for North America South Africa but in general we sell

all over the world how much fish are you producing a year I mean it was a huge place this we produce millions of fish per month we are one of the biggest farms in the world fundamental is much of the technology here a technology that you've developed yourself and what was that that we saw coming across so we use the feeders robot feeders that we developed by ourselves for kibutsamal that feed our Greenhouse constantly during the days about 20 times per day automatically it's help us to feed with very low cost as far as water

is concerned you know when somebody thinks about doing things in the desert they're not necessarily going to think of growing fish which is using water so your water uses compared to others what is that like we cycled 100 of the water first of all the all our fish farm is a biosecure system that they consume only five to ten percent water change per day and the well the water that go out from our systems we irrigate all year round the water through a dates Farm we have a very good relation with all the university in

Israel especially with the penguin University we have a very interesting collaboration with the professor Dina zilberg and also we have an amazing project collaboration with the professor misagi in this lab we focus on research related to fish health We Carry Out research on various disease causing agents parasites bacteria we are also looking at fish Immunology studying the fish immune system we provide diagnostic services to aquaculture farms around the country and one of our main themes is looking for natural alternatives for chemicals and antibiotics that are used in aquaculture we are looking for various plants and

extracts of plants that can replace those chemicals we are also looking for natural treatments that can immuno stimulate the fish boost their immune system we are using a lot of algae in the food for that that's one of the main ways by which we stimulate the fish looking for Unique microalgae that can be added to the food and and make the fish stronger I was fascinated to see that run is also growing millions of male prawns and I was even more intrigued to see his workers injecting tiny prawn fry and to learn that they were

injecting them with an agent to silence a gene producing a hormone for male organs therefore the injected male prawns develop female reproductive organs and can mate with regular male prawns to produce an all-male population which are much larger than the females so we went to see the ben-guran university scientists who invented this technology to find out more about it we discovered a insulin-like hormone that is responsible for maleness we understood that if we silence the gene that is encoding this hormone and this is exactly what we do and now Ryan is doing it in order

to produce The Brood stock that at the end is producing only males and then you increase the yield when we realized that could be a game changer in the industry and because we we are talking about a huge Market of uh in this specific prawn about 400 000 tons and mostly in China and Vietnam the Chinese market is the largest in the world and we are talking here about traditional food it's not an item that you eat in the restaurant once a year it there this is their natural food so it is a very significant

um part of their diet since the animals are all male and non-breeding we could use them for biocontrol tasks mostly in Africa and this is a very large project that we are running we are also working on a project together of sending those all male prawns to Senegal in West Africa in order to fight a devastating disease the disease is called bilharzia schistosomiosis this disease is transmitted by freshwater snails about 200 000 people die annually from the disease and more than 200 million people are infected mostly in Africa and our prawns were found to be

voracious predators of those freshwater snakes so we are we want to use those prawns as bio control agents to eliminate the disease it's a really big project financed by Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and of course we are working with a local NGO in Senegal and the Senegalese Health Ministry and a few other universities from around the world and hopefully we'll have very good results soon enough [Music] we've come to the end of our journey we've seen jojoba plantations exotic mushrooms on the Egyptian border we've been to Vineyards and drunk Negev wine in the middle

of the desert we've seen the smallest tombury tomato being grown by the Jordanian border and we've seen corals being grown for medicine ornamental fish and we've seen biotech prawns [Music] and when I think about it to be a great farmer you have to be so many things you have to be a grower of course but you also have to be a scientist an engineer a business person an economist and above all you have to be willing to take risks we've also seen how interwoven the Negev farmers are with agricultural research and we've met some of

the brilliant scientists at Ben gurin University who are pushing forward the boundaries of the possible the port agriculture in the Negev at the beginning of this movie I asked the question whether we can still find that Spirit of innovation that David Ben-Gurion envisioned in the Negev I think David Ben-Gurion would have been really proud to see these amazing people farming the Negev building Israel and I think he would have been so gratified that Ben Gurion University is at the Forefront fulfilling his dream and working hand in hand with these desert pioneers [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause]

foreign [Music] [Music] foreign [Music]