1. 6/22/2015 Entrepreneur boasts drip system could end world hunger | The Times of Israel
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Entrepreneur boasts drip
system could end world hunger
NaanDanJain’s new rice watering system, says the company’s
agronomist, can help farmers save water, take more crop to market
BY DAVID SHAMAH May 4, 2015, 5:45 pm
M
aking a bold statement, NaanDanJain chief agronomist Maoz Aviv says he believes
his company will be able to solve some of the worst problems of world hunger.
“It’s hard to believe that a little drip system could do so much, but our new rice drip irrigation
product really has the potential to vastly improve the lives of people in the developing world,” Aviv
said.
One might be inclined to take such a claim with a grain of salt (or rice). But NaanDanJain – an
Israeli­Indian firm, created in 2007 when Israeli irrigation tech firm NaanDan merged with India’s
Jain Irrigation Systems – is one of the world leaders in drip­irrigation, filters, climate control
systems, sprinkler systems for agriculture, and other hardware and control systems used in farms
across India and the rest of Asia, as well as in North America, South America and Europe.
Speaking last week at Agritech 2015, a major agricultural technology event in Tel Aviv that drew
some ten thousand visitors from Israel and abroad, Amnon Ofen, director of NaanDanJain, said
that the company was “helping India bloom with our affordable drip irrigation, filter, and fertilizer
technology. There is no question that our firm has been responsible for the green revolution in
India. I would estimate that NaanDanJain products have helped increase India agricultural output
by tens of percent. Millions of Indian farmers are using Israeli equipment and technology, and they
are producing more from their land.”
If sales and revenue are any indication, NaanDanJain is a hit with farmers. The company had
revenues of nearly a billion dollars in 2013­14, and is now the second biggest irrigation company in
the world (behind another Israeli drip­irrigation firm, Netafim). But, said Aviv, the company’s new
system for watering rice is very different – and perhaps far more important – than anything the
company has tried before.
Rice is the staple crop in the Far East, where most of the world’s poor people live, and is the third
biggest crop by yield in the world. It’s also an expensive crop to raise. Rice, according to the
common wisdom, needs a lot of water.
But the common wisdom is wrong, said Aviv – and that is the basis of NaanDanJain’s new way of
watering rice. “I, too, was under the impression that rice was a ‘thirsty’ crop, but as an agronomist,
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I conducted an in­depth study of the crop – and discovered that it is no more thirsty than wheat,
corn, or any of the other commodity crops where drip­irrigation has successfully been used to
save water.”
Currently, rice farmers use the traditional furrow­flooding method of watering their crops, where
they dig ditches around rows of growing rice and let loose large amounts of water, which flow
through the furrows and seep into the soil where the crop is growing.
That is exactly what wheat and corn farmers did before drip­irrigation, which aims water directly at
seeds and plants – thus obviating the need for flooding and furrows, and saving up to 70% of the
water needed. Actually, many of those farmers still use the furrow system or other irrigation
techniques; currently only about 5% of the world’s farmers use drip­irrigation.
Rice farmers in rural China, India, Cambodia, Vietnam, and other Asian countries don’t have that
luxury, though – and it’s for them that the company developed the rice drip system, said Aviv. “We
installed the systems in several test areas, and discovered that the rice did better with drip­
irrigation than with traditional irrigation – it was stronger, bigger, and less prone to fungus attacks,
which are usually caused by excessive moisture. Farmers were able to save 70% of the water
they used, and got a 50% increase in output per hectare. We did a similar thing with bananas –
between drip­irrigation and other technologies used by farmers, we were able to nearly quadruple
the output of bananas in some places.”
With the system perfected, NaanDanJain has embarked on a sales campaign to convince rice
farmers that drip­irrigation is a good idea for their farms. “Farmers, especially in the developing
world, are set in their ways – if it was good enough for their fathers and grandfathers, it’s good
enough for them. We are trying to educate them that this is not necessarily the case, and that with
climate change and prices on the international commodity market squeezed by competition, they
need to take new approaches to growing.”
If anything preventing farmers in developing countries from adopting drip­irrigation, it’s the initial
up­front investment needed to install a system. NaanDanJain has a solution for that as well, said
Aviv. “We lend farmers the money they need to install systems, and they pay back from profits
they make on their crops. We’re sort of a micro­lender for these farmers, one of the few private
companies in this region of the world that has a financing model like this.”
Withe the breakthroughs in water technology, the investments being made in water infrastructure
by governments in the Far East, Africa, and South America, and by international groups like the
UN, along with the financing models aimed at getting water­saving technology out of research labs
and into farms, Aviv is very optimistic that the world can solve its hunger problems. “I know that
statistics show that drip­irrigation is not widely used, but I can almost guarantee that within a
decade the picture will be very different. The world has no choice but to go the water­saving
route.”
Drip­irrigation was invented in Israel by Netafim – which Aviv does not see as a rival, but as a
partner in the “good fight” both companies are waging to bringing Israeli water­saving technology
to the world. “Israel has invented many things that have benefited the world, from computer and

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networking technology to mobile tech to medical innovations,” said Aviv. “That’s all great, but our
innovations in water and agricultural technology are the real game changers. The Internet and
mobile tech is good for now, but that’s eventually going to change. The water­saving technology
we are inventing now will be in use hundreds of years from now.”
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