Transforming Israel's Desert: Innovative Agriculture | FULL EPISODE | Insights on TBN Israel

theoretically nothing's supposed to grow but look everything is green everything is flourishing so far it's worked so far just asking for a friend how safe is this it's okay we don't know pretty safe what are you growing here i mean what are all the plants that are growing here it's easier to ask what we we're not growing what do you not grow here exactly if you don't know what's in the ground you're in a sense acting blindly we're sending sensors to africa to asia to places that you would never imagine basically we're teaching the world

how to feed itself what you have here is is examples of cancer cells that are being killed by natural plant substances yes exactly the desert has a lot to offer the zionist dream still exists and lives in our hearts we all remember the story of the 12 spies when moses sent them in the land we all know the beautiful picture of those two spies carrying the grapevine but when the people of israel came back from diaspora after the second exile when god is bringing them back in the beginning of the 19th century the biggest problem

was how would they provide for themselves there was a need there was a necessity and this necessity brought israel in the field of agriculture to levels which none of our neighbors got to israel is leading in the agriculture worldwide agriculture turned into a science here in the land of israel and it turned into a science because of necessity i believe that god the same god that brought us into the land gave us a supernatural wisdom in the field of agriculture let us see what god did in this field in the land of israel [Music] [Music]

it was real people with real ambition who transformed this land from the desert into an agricultural dreamland like the one we're standing in right now and when you think about the miracle of the transformation the depth of that transformation you realize what a unique characteristic those people truly had [Music] we're looking at a flourishing green amazing desert which it's kind of an oxymoron instead of struggling you're sitting in a place that is a mass exporter of goods to the entire world it's layer on there on their own layer of innovation research discovery necessity pushing into

just really creative ideas out of every challenge grows an opportunity here in the desert we're walking through the desert and you keep looking at all these plants and you're saying to yourself there must be something more i've met two kinds of israelis the ones that a challenge for them is a is a closed door and that's it and the kind of israelis that said the closed door is only an excuse to get into this room through the window [Music] i took a journey deep into southern israel to the arava the arabah is a long desert

valley along the border with jordan that stretches from the dead sea to the gulf of ilat and it's incredibly hot and dry here surprisingly it's also a mainstay of israel's agriculture industry what a place nadav no place like home look at this beautiful view this is what we see every morning from a window and it's very much not what you would expect from uh the middle of the desert quote unquote more agriculture than many areas of the country have probably greener than most of a lot of the places you've been at and this is you

know the land of the end of summer right now we're in khatsevah a cooperative agricultural village in southern israel or a mushaf as it's known in hebrew it was founded in 1965 as part of israel's desert agriculture revolution with 150 independent farms operating today remains a key player in making sure desert farming continues to thrive nadav who oversees the entire moshav gave me the grand tour so let's go back to your origin story you're not of this place i'm not original originally how did you end up in the middle of the desert the zionist dream

still you know exist and lives in our hearts what is that in your mind so look we are about we're half a mile from the jordanian border and to the west also nothing there we've decided we want to grow our kids here and basically make the desert bloom bring a different kind of israel here on a human level and right now i'm the ceo of the demo shop so i wasn't even born here not raised here but now i you know as they say i run this joint [Music] when you get into your car and

you drive south of iosheva into the desert you see a lot of yellow you know this is desert why would i want to live here and then you take a left turn into the moshav and you see a lot of green and every time we have people that haven't spent much time here they say it's amazing i didn't realize it's so much green here the israeli market is very small how many people in israel eat what 8 million people it's nothing we grow for about 80 million people because people are you know persistent they're trying

and it's working the topsoil here is something that almost nothing grows on and we can see in date farms and grapefruits peppers and tomatoes and all kinds of you know the good stuff they don't belong in this place basically it's a ton of things that don't belong in this place and also the knowledge that people have gained through the years we don't keep it to ourselves basically we're teaching the world how to feed itself now you've entered see the day trees and the little uh turnabout that says in the negev the people of israel will

be tested by david ben-gurion this is how we live ourselves so far it seems like you've done well with this test so far so good so far so good these are called net houses they're not greenhouses this is a greenhouse you would grow tomatoes and then cucumbers are left it's tunnels eggplants watermelons you can see we also grow corn here israeli agriculture is very high tech we moved from throwing some water on the ground and see whatever grows to drip irrigation hanging the plants making more out of the three major things that you need for

growing something you need soil you need water you need sun so sunlight we have year round water we don't have good quality water here but we drill for about a mile deep and we take very salty water but we learn how to use them in the fields even the soil that we step on most of the crops are not grown on the soil so we bring soul from other parts of israel we put it on the topsoil that already exists and then we grow on it about a hundred years ago when jews from mostly european

countries called countries when they moved to israel they wanted to tear off this image of the jew that always looked down and always were looked down at and overnight they they shed the the shell of the diaspora of like of 2 000 years of being detached from the land of the country you saw a new jewish face you saw the strong farmer you don't see the black clothes you don't see the long beard you see the strong jew that is moving to israel and making the desert bloom it's sort of like the ultimate test of

character you can't be soft and make it in the desert even if you look into the biblical narrative you can't ever achieve something of virtue or quality without going through a desert phase without the hardship and the struggle let's show you some of our greenhouses we talked so much there you go welcome we have the cherry tomatoes which are very famous for israel and if you look at the way that we grow them this is a stem right this is a tomato stand so it should just grow from the ground straight up right but what

we do here we take it around back and forth back and forth why when you have a single step that goes up you can have 20 tomatoes 40 tomatoes here you can take out of one stem one plant about 400 tomatoes why do we even need to grow things on the ground we have strawberries there's a little bit of dirt in it and they use whatever water they need and because they're in an angle whatever leftover water flows down to a water tank and you reuse the water here you have mint now why grow mint

on the ground why not grow it on a post let it go up easier to pick less insects less bugs if i have a greenhouse okay so i'll probably plant several plants and let it grow no there's a better way to do it try to hang it try to push it try to pull it we're sending this place that's a hub of thinking creatively about how to maximize everything exactly so tell me how it is just dig into it oh this is juicy great huh very sweet not gonna live off of that [Music] so right

now we're going to a date farm that a friend of mine is working on it's right over there [Music] so now we're going to meet thomas hey tommy hi nice to you're the real deal when we think about the people out in the desert making agriculture happen you're the face of that i appreciate it i want to teach my kids also to know what is a hard work and why we're here in israel i need to do it myself before i teach other people to do it so i take the challenge on myself right now

so i imagine toma most of the work happens at height and we're here mainly because we want to go up so let's go let's go up let's go up [Music] so here you can actually see the view on this side is the moshav itself more day plantation greenhouses when you get up at height it's even more shocking how much there's a contrast you're in the middle of the most deserty desert you could imagine this is exactly the future of agriculture in israel if tomorrow and their likes will choose to come here to learn about it

to work in this environment for a year or two i can see a bright future because this is going to be a very high-tech field of expertise we think here in the arava this is the the next field where israel is going to lead the world and thomas is a perfect example for it [Music] the early pioneers who came back to the land in the late 19th century endured incredible hardship trying to cultivate the land again and over time with the development of technology things got easier today things are much different israel became an exporter

of technology and knowledge to the farthest corners of the earth in fact in deserts around the world today plants and fields are growing with technology coming out of the land of zion so we've seen how israeli innovation has helped with the desert problem but now we're going to meet something slightly different we're on our way up to natanie which is in the northern coastal area of israel to meet with cropex which is this new startup company who've developed a new sensor package which is supposed to help farmers around the world have a deeper understanding of

exactly what's happening in their field in real time [Music] we're about to see a demonstration of the system do you want to introduce your all-star team before we uh get started yeah sure thing avi recently did leah from new jersey he's an agronomist and data science under the groundery team and guy is the vp of agronomy he knows everything there is to know so he's the guy with a plan huh exactly the brain my uh grew up in los angeles she's a part of the customer service team so so this is it i mean i

was expecting you know some heavy machinery it looks like you guys brought the same equipment i have at home it's just one power tool and that's all you need all i do is i find where i want to put it in the field and then i dig a hole and then we just screw it into the ground as such it's that simple i can now see the data from the soil i can see that it was recently fertilized and you can see the moisture content of the soil and they can see soil temperature so with

this data that i get immediately the farmer can make much better decisions cropex represents israeli agritech at its finest it's a smart farming device that gives farmers real-time insights into the conditions of their soil and it's being used around the world tropics is part of the agtech revolution so we have sensors in this device that measure the moisture of the soil electroconductivity which is salinity the saltiness of the soil that we connect that to nitrogen and fertility and temperature the part that you see out of the ground transmits to the cloud [Music] what have farmers

been doing so far in many places yeah they do this you're kidding no i'm not kidding still today in the first world yeah we create much more value between 10 and 20 yield increasement which is which is huge with every sensor that is installed across the globe our system continues to learn and to get smarter and the power of the system grows because the system because the system is getting more the system yeah exactly when i was done with my previous startup i really looked for something different that kind of had a do good part

to it you know since then i haven't looked back yet again the challenges israelis are facing have led to solutions that impact people everywhere in the world this is what happens when god blesses a nation promises to prosper them and then empowers them to carry out his promises if you can make it in the air of i can probably make it anywhere in israel if you want to be a pioneer in any field of expertise this is the place to be it's a huge honor being able to expose israel to the world through a positive

technology you know that really helps save the globe from the arava where people are putting in the hours and developing methods to make the desert bloom to innovative israelite that is creating a global smart farming network the future looks bright and the sky's the limit [Music] we use technology and innovation to grow crops in the desert despite the harsh conditions but when you take those conditions and combine them with agricultural know-how and medical science miracles can take place hello rivky shalom welcome thank you thank you for coming is this your famous lab yes please enter

thank you at a young age dr rifkiofi packed her bags and headed to israel's agrawad desert where she got her phd in plant biology for decades she has been studying the healing properties of plants native to the arava and what she's discovered is that their ability to heal is directly related to the desert environment in which they grow so we're here because you present a fascinating story so maybe we can start sort of with the background story of how you got to hear today love brought me here this was in 1973. i joined my husband

muschale he was the founder of the mushaf from 1973 to 1982 we work on the fields and raise three kids and i always dream about going back to science lucky me on 1982 i went to do my phd in bengali university i asked the question why the immune system failed to eradicate cancer diseases it's quite relevant still quite quite relevant still being a mother traveled a lot in the desert around me i saw the desert plants and i already had the idea that there is some secret in this plant and maybe i will be able

to harness them to my research [Music] in one of the plants which is called achillea fragmentosa i found something very interesting not just against cancer but against a brain diseases there was one compound that i really liked so the chemists said bring me a lot of this material and i will separate this compound and give you a tube with this compound so i went to the desert to the same place where i collect this plant took the seeds went to the farm irrigate fertilized et cetera and every huge amount begs with the plant and i

went to this chemist in tel aviv and he said i need to disappoint you i can find this compound only in the desert plant i don't find it where you irrigate while trying to extract this miracle compound dr rivki stumbled across the true secret of the desert many people when they imagine a plant we want to give it the best conditions but in reality especially in the desert they need some kind of stress the plants that grow in the desert going through many many harsh conditions like irradiation salt sun no rain the quality only comes

out when it's hard yes [Music] so this is the famous lab yes and in the lab we have sales uh-huh cancer cells will grow here in the incubator can i take a look you can look at them in order to be expert you need to look in the microscope i'm not an expert yes so the yellow ones in your sample are the cancer cells that died from desert plant extracts exactly yes that's a quite a good sample there yes we have many samples like this you say this in passing as if it's like an obvious

thing but what you have here is is examples of cancer cells that are being killed by by natural plant substances yes exactly yeah that's quite a statement exactly for you it's like yes another day in the office but for most people that's that's news it's not chemo it's not radiation yes that is killing cancer cells exactly so many years i tell the people that there is something unique in the desert and suddenly i was able to prove it it's just a beautiful process say like look there must be something about these plants there's something about

the hardship and then you you proved it it's almost impossible to miss the analogies between the personal journey and the story of reclaiming the desert you sort of did that same process on the cellular level i agree with you i really agree thank you for making all these conclusions it's your story [Music] with us today is professor jaime rabinovic the bible tells us that the land of israel is the land of milk and honey and with him we're going to discuss the whole issue of agriculture professor rabbinovich welcome welcome to our show it's a pleasure

to be here thank you in israel you're known to be the father of the cherry tomatoes i'm not the father i'm a member of a team maybe head of the team and so on so forth but it all started with our previous work on extending the shelf life of the tomato indeed the surf life of the tomato was extended but b the tomato could stay on the bush for a longer period of time thus accumulate more sugars more acids more volatiles so that all the goodies instead of being compacted into let's say 50 tons is

being compacted in 25 so it's even more tasty picking cherry tomatoes is is laborious a trained worker with salah tomato who does like that picks about 800 kilograms per day a cherry tomato is 60 kilograms per day so it's much more expensive and we asked ourselves when you buy grapes do you ever dream of buying grapes individually never ever you think about a bunch of grapes right so why can't we do the same thing with cherry tomatoes that's beautiful so oh when a fruit develops seeds actually a lot of energy which means lots of sugars

lots of fatty acids proteins and so on so forth go into the seed which is the embryo of the next generation now israel was the first one to develop what we call pathocarpic cucumbers once they develop without seeds that means a you don't need fertilizers so you save a lot of the space all the plants are female for this respect b cucumbers are much more tasty and this was spread all over the world in every every field of agriculture that you you throw a stone you find a touch of israeli innovative approach when we talk

about israel israel is known that is leading in agriculture it's probably because of necessity but in which mainly because amazing it's a combination of very high skilled farmers a very good supporting system of experts very good contacts most of israeli agriculture farmers are university graduates and they give they keep worlds are very few of them today they're about 12 000 growers in israel and it's not surprising to get a telephone call from a farmer look i was a student like 20 years ago i have a problem can you help me in answering the problem and

so on so forth very high sophisticated seed industry of fruit and vegetables that were developed in israel and are being sold now all over the world rather than importing uh things that were developed let's say in denmark and i have nothing against denmark but it is suitable to a different climate different different soil different everything so by adding this together with good farming you can get a good good good produce professor jaime robinovich what a great insight on agriculture thank you very much and for your friend stay with us for another insight on israel thank

you for joining us as we provide a spiritual insight of what god is doing in israel and in the middle east if you want to learn more about what god is doing in israel make sure to visit us on our webpage and follow us on social media shalom and god bless you for jerusalem [Music]