Just when you thought the future of Australian agriculture was all about wads of Asian investment and burgeoning exports to China or Indonesia, along comes Benjamin Netanyahu.
The Israeli Prime Minister’s four-day visit to Australia late last month has turned the spotlight onto the high tech and productivity achievements of Israel’s farm sector.
The Jewish state, with a population of just 8.5 million people living in a famously dangerous and arid part of the planet, is also home to the world’s most productive dairy cows, milking about 12 million litres in a lactation – twice the Australian herd average.
It is also one of the fastest growing agricultural technology hot spots with projects as diverse as tobacco plant-based crops used to make collagen for medical and cosmetic markets worth $1 million a kilogram, and lab-grown chicken meat originating from cells taken from the bird’s feathers.
The Israelis have also perfected tomato crops which use 40pc less water than conventional varieties because they are grafted onto specially-bred drought tolerant rootstock, automatically.
By next year the Rootility company’s grafting process will supply 40m plants every 10 weeks, with a Californian partner set to harvest yields almost double those of conventional varieties.
“We can not only learn a lot from the way Israel supports and incubates its agricultural technology sector, we can build better solutions to Australian production with Israeli partners,” said ag tech head at accounting and advisory services firm KPMG Australia, Ben van Delden.
Mr van Delden was part of a recent Australian trade mission to Israel studying farm technology opportunities well beyond Israel’s best-known breakthroughs in drip irrigation.
He returned urging frequent Australian research exchanges to Israel and recommending Australia establish a network of ag tech hubs.
Coincidentally, just as Mr Netanyahu arrived in Australia to sign a research and innovation agreement with the federal government, NSW dairy investment youngster Blue River Group, announced it was in the throes of setting up a farm hub to showcase Israeli agricultural technology.
The company is well down the track to assembling a consortium of overseas and local project partners in its Project Bridge initiative to host local and imported ideas and researchers in an innovation hub at Wagga Wagga in southern NSW.
Backed by local agribusiness investors and outside funds, the project is planned to work collaboratively with many players, similarly to the way Israel actively encourages its own agtech sector to thrive.
Grant Fuzi a co-chief executive officer of Blue River, which last spring bought Fonterra’s Riverina Fresh milk factory at Wagga, said discussions to buy an existing dairy farm and expand its operation with Israeli technology were already underway.
No expenditure figure had been confirmed, but Mr Fuzi said it could cost between $4m and $10m to get the commercial farming project rolling, ideally within 12 months.
Israeli dairy initiatives and related technology to be trialled at the site could include new or different approaches to irrigation management, fodder conservation, mixed ration feeding programs and herd health strategies, and milking parlor developments.
While Israel’s dairy industry owes much of its productivity to extensive free-stall barn developments each housing thousands of cows, Mr Fuzi said there was no single solution to replicate those gains in Australia.
“Project Bridge is about showcasing all sorts of new technology on a commercial farming enterprise,” he said.
“It doesn’t even have to fit with the Israeli technology theme – Australian farmers have many innovative ideas already in use or needing further testing on-farm.
“If you know how to harness the capital to help develop these technologies in Australia there is plenty of impact investment money available to support this sort of thing.”
Impact investment refers to funds committed by investors who want to see profitable projects delivering measurable social and community gains as well as shareholder dividends.
Mr Fuzi said agricultural productivity and its flow-on benefits to regional employment made agribusiness as attractive to many impact investors as the education, health or aged care sectors.
Having an ag technology hub at Wagga could draw capacity already established at Charles Sturt University and even the city’s army and airforce bases.
Interestingly, Israel’s armed forces and its compulsory conscription policy were important factors in the nation’s innovation culture, said KPMG’s Mr van Delden.
“Young Israelis do not view compulsory service as a lost three years,” he said, noting the military was at the forefront of new technology and often involved with university and private partnership startups.
“Military experience is seen as something of a knowledge hub environment offering exposure to tech and potentially valuable contacts.”
Israel’s permanent national security issues also cultivated a “heightened sense of the potential fragility of things, which creates a restless momentum”.
“There’s a palatable collective urgency to progress … and it’s not limited to 20-something-year-old entrepreneurs,” Mr van Delden said.
He cited an Israeli company which developed technology to enhance natural sweetness in foods without needing to add sugar.
DouxMatok is run by 65-yearold Eran Baniel and his 92-year old father.
Israeli insights from KPMG
Among the recommendations for Australian agricultural technology success made by KPMG’s Ben van Delden after the Israeli trade mission was a case for making the work of Australia’s “quiet science and technology achievers” more publicly prominent.
“We should seek ways to better tell our own stories of innovation at public places like airports, auditoriums or institutions,” he said, noting similar prominence was given to Israeli innovators and their success stories.
Mr van Delden also concluded that redirecting some of Australia’s public innovation funding to fill the seed funding gap in the market could help de-risk innovation.
It would also encourage a “safe to fail” attitude or “chutzpah” about new ideas and projects among companies and researchers.
He suggested refreshing the incentive models so researchers are remunerated for successfully commercialising research.
“The prize should be the successful outcome of the research, not winning the research grant itself,” he said.
Based on the Israeli experience, Mr van Delden believed more direction could be provided to universities, state agricultural departments and rural research and development corporations via commercial key performance indicators.
Shorter grant periods would help promote “sprint” innovation.
Andrew Marshall
Andrew Marshall is the group agribusiness writer for ACM's state agricultural weeklies and websites. He is a former editor at The Land and has worked in various Rural Press group roles in Canberra, North Richmond (NSW) and Toowoomba (Qld).
Andrew Marshall is the group agribusiness writer for ACM's state agricultural weeklies and websites. He is a former editor at The Land and has worked in various Rural Press group roles in Canberra, North Richmond (NSW) and Toowoomba (Qld).
