Biting into a strawberry grown from a crop to be served at the Wimbledon tennis championships, this is Israel’s agriculture minister Oded Forer on a visit to Britain this week.
The fruit was grown using an Israeli irrigation system, making the moment a symbol of his pledge to share innovative technology with the UK and other partners across the globe to combat a looming food crisis.
In an exclusive interview with the JC, Mr Forer described it as Israel’s “contribution to humanity”.
He said: “We are now in a situation — and I’m talking about not only Israel or the UK, but the whole world — that we don’t have time to wait.
“There is a crisis because of the climate changing and global warming, and we are adding to that the war between Russia and Ukraine that influences the whole world and all the food supply, and we need to find new solutions.”
Mr Forer was speaking to the JC at the science research organisation National Institute of Agricultural Botany (NIAB) in Kent.
He added: “We must deepen our collaboration with the UK in the field of agriculture.”
Emphasising the importance of collaboration, he said: “It’s not a problem that Israel should solve alone, or the UK should solve alone or another country.
visit of Israel-s agriculture minister Oded Forer to Britain 3
Oded Forer tries a strawberry grown using Israeli tech
“And what we are now doing is deepening our collaboration with our friends, in order to have better research and development (R&D) solutions for this situation. Technology, innovation, using artificial intelligence, this is the future that will save the world from hunger.”
At the NIAB, the minister saw how the use of technology and genetic modification can increase crop yield, crop efficiency and resilience to climate change.
Irrigation technology from Israeli firm Netafim was being used to grow strawberries that are being sold at the tennis at Wimbledon this week. Netafim was founded in 1965 in the Negev desert where farmers were learning to grow crops in arid soil.
Mr Forer says that the country possesses expertise that has the potential to be game-changing as global temperatures reach new heights: “We had to do it decades ago, so maybe we’re a step ahead of many countries, and we are willing to share our knowledge. We think that this is our contribution to humanity. We want to start and research together with other countries in order to find new solutions — and those solutions should come fast. We have a lot of technology and innovation in Israel, and we need to take this technology and to put it into agriculture.
“Fortunately, Israel and the UK have a lot of collaboration, but not enough in Agri-Tech and food, and what we would like to do is deepen this collaboration.”
Dr Elizabeth Warham, Agri-Tech lead in the UK’s Department for International Trade, agrees with Forer, telling the JC: “Every country is working in silos almost, and therefore, if you work together, and you bring different know-how, then your line of attack on that problem is much stronger.”
At the G7 conference last week, the leaders of the world’s seven biggest economies pledged a further $4.5 billion to tackle world hunger, but that has been criticised by many charities as not enough, with Oxfam saying leaders are “leaving millions to starve and cooking the planet”.
Mr Forer says that research and global collaboration is the solution: “What leaders should be doing is to start and invest a lot of money in R&D, and to do it together with the industry. Eventually, without practical research, not only academic research, we won’t be able to find the solutions.
“What we are doing now in Israel is investing a lot of government money in practical R&D, finding solutions. And we are willing to collaborate with other countries and other academic and research institutes all over the world.
“We are doing it with the United States, we do it with the UAE, and I think we can do it and should do it with the UK.”
He added that finding these solutions is also key to global security: “Eventually, finding solutions for the food crisis will make the world more stable and it will help us solve problems, also regional problems that will stabilise the regimes in the area.
“For example, if there is a food crisis in Egypt, it influences Israel. So, this is my interest to find, together with my neighbours, the way to grow food [with the] climate changing and global warming.
“What we need to do now is to make a revolution in agriculture, Agri-Tech, and food tech, and finding solutions for alternative protein, and we can’t invest alone.
“It’s not right for any country to invest alone. We need to invest together, and to find the solutions together.”
