Danielle Abraham
Destroying Israeli Agriculture was Part of Hamas’s Evil Plan
Danielle Abraham | Destroying Israeli Agriculture was Part of Hamas’s Evil Plan | 05.21.24
Visuals presented throughout the presentation.
- Good afternoon and good evening everybody. I’m very pleased that we are here today with my friend Danielle. And Danielle has dedicated her career in Israel to leveraging Israeli expertise and innovation for global development. Today Danielle is the Founder and Executive Director of Volcani International Partnerships, an Israeli NGO, tackling global food and nutrition insecurity with Israel’s agricultural experience, expertise and innovation. In the days following October 7th, Danielle led the establishment of ReGrow Israel to rebuild the farming communities devastated by the attacks. A renowned advocate for addressing global food insecurity with Israeli agricultural expertise, Danielle is a sought after speaker at prestigious global conferences, including Harvard University, the World Food Prize, and the Milken Conference.
Danielle started her career in Israel as a Senior Policy Advisor in MASHAV, Israel’s Agency for International Development Cooperation and working with the UN OECD and German Development Bank. Danielle holds a BA and an MA from the University of Oxford and lives in Tel Aviv. So Danielle, today we wanted to focus very specifically on what I still think is a bit of an untold story after October 7th. And you know, I think for those of us who have paid close attention since October 7th, people could tell you about the horrific events of that day, the devastation in the kibbutz communities, the devastation for the loss of life and the hostages. But not many could tell you about the agri-terrorism that took place that day and the long-term consequences for Israel.
So really where I wanted to start is, is at the beginning, you know, if you think about Israel in the ‘60s and '70s and the strap line of making the desert bloom, everybody can tell you some form of, you know, old kibbutz story about how they, how Israel really took a revolutionary approach. So maybe you can just bring us up to date with Israeli agriculture, AgTech and innovation, and where Israel was pre-October 7th.
- Fantastic, so thank you so much Carly and it’s really a pleasure to be here. I’ll just share my slides just so I can share some pictures with you all, as well at the same time to make it come to life. Alright, so let’s start really at the beginning. So Israel has almost legendary status when it comes to agriculture, you know, Israel’s renowned for making the desert bloom, with famous around the world for water innovations and agricultural technologies. But what I want you to know is that Israel is actually a really stupid place to do agriculture. There are huge challenges to overcome, you know, Israel is a tiny country, so it has not a lot of land. The soil, because we’re two thirds desert, is very poor quality. And of course there’s an associated lack of water. Israel is situated what I normally describe is a difficult neighbourhood geographically speaking, which means, you know, the export markets always just that further afield, which is not good for agriculture.
And all the immigrants coming into the country in the early days actually had no clue whatsoever, what they were doing. And if you look at agriculture back in the days and what the land looked like, it actually looked something like this. We had pioneers draining swamps, we had rocky barren deserts. And any agriculture was incredibly primitive with horses and these kinds of carts for ploughing. Yet what Israel managed to do in very short space of time was actually, create a complete agricultural transformation. Not only positioning, you know, agriculture for real food security, but also as a driver of the economy. You can see the comparisons here in the pictures. And ultimately this is what agriculture looks like in Israel today. Very high tech.
This is actually an image from a drone with a thermal camera which flies over the field, according to the temperature, will tell you which rows of your crops need more water and which ones need less. So that’s really the agricultural story of Israel. And today, even up to today and until October 7th, countries from around the world came to Israel to learn from Israel’s success. And critically how did Israel do it? You understand the challenges, it really made no sense. So that’s a bit of the context
And you know, the agricultural industry exists all across Israel. What you’ve taught me in the month since October 7th is not all parts of Israel are equal in terms of the agricultural opportunities and not all parts of Israel were responsible for the same types of production and economy. So perhaps you can just give us a bit of an understanding where, what happens in the different agricultural areas of Israel and particularly the Western Negev.
Yes, so definitely. So I’ll continue some of these slides here and show you Israel as a whole, not only managed to transform the agriculture but actually created global levels of achievement in production, Carly, for you, the cows here, Israel has the most productive dairy cow in the world. People come from all over the world. Israel produces the most citrus fruit per hectare, the highest tomato yield, and is a leader of post harvest handling, which is world renowned, really if you look at some of the statistics on the screen. And also this starts to relate to the area that we call the Western Negev. The Gaza Envelope is that actually what Israel did was make the desert bloom and Israel produces a lot of produce from the desert, which contributes to Israel’s food security. And if we look at the area that we’ve now termed the Western Negev, the whole area that was attacked on October 7th, we actually referred to that area as the bread basket of Israel.
No, we’re not making bread, but in Israel, our bread is basically the Israeli salad. And that area was responsible for producing about 70% of Israel’s vegetables, 20% of the fruit, and six and a half percent of the dairy. It’s incredibly significant in terms of food security for the state of Israel. If you look at the land mass in that region, we’re talking to give you a sense of size of about 40,000 hectares. And that is divided roughly 30,000 hectares for the kibbutzim, so the cooperatives that work together and 10,000 for the moshavim. The kibbutzim rule of thumb are usually doing more field crops, so potatoes, onions, carrots and things like that. And the moshavim doing more intensive agriculture, producing all the tomatoes, the peppers, and your real Israeli salad. So that’s a bit more about what that was doing then. And I think it’s also important to mention that the agriculture in the Western Negev also underpinned the economy of the region. This is an agricultural area. The communities there are agricultural and agriculture provides for a vast majority of the economy.
And we’ll get in more detail to what’s going on in the north of Israel. But what’s the agricultural situation there?
Catastrophic, if you want me to be blunt. I received calls even this morning from stakeholders up in the north. They’re coming under fire continually. I dunno, how many of you have seen how many rockets are being fired every day from the northern border? The foreign workers situation, 30,000 foreign workers fled after October 7th. That’s hit all of the farms across Israel and not just in the south. So in the north, they’re contending with a lack of foreign workers, a lack of a safe working environment. Almost everyone’s been evacuated and those that have stayed behind, you know it’s a huge egg production area, are facing continual rocket fire. And the majority of the farms don’t have safe spaces to go to. They don’t have enough bomb shelters. I just saw a list if you want to know, of about 1,020 urgent bomb shelter needs from farmers across the north. So it’s very, very difficult for them.
So let’s turn to this untold story from October 7th. What exactly happened with regards to the farmers and agriculture on October 7th? And what do you think was driving Hamas’ actions here?
Yes, it is a very important question and it’s an important story to share and to tell. So like you said, Carly, at the beginning of the call, you know, October the 7th was the day that changed all of our lives. And I think so many people have heard so much, have read so much, about the atrocities that Hamas came to commit. And what has received far less attention is that actually when Hamas came on October 7th, one of their key goals was to destroy Israeli agriculture, strategically, systematically, and very intentionally. And they came and they blew up tractors, they stole tractors, they blew up irrigation equipment, farmhouses. And I actually want to show you some of these images ‘cause I think it’s very important to get a sense of the damage. This here is a tractor at kibbutz Nahal Oz, which is in the northern part of the Western Negev. This is just sitting there. Hamas terrace took the time to go and burn it. These reels are irrigation reels.
As I said, the Western Negev is the desert, it is the Negev. This is where Israel made the desert bloom. And of course to make anything bloom, you need water. So everything is about irrigation in this area. And these reels that you can see usually have rubber pipes around them and it’s what carries the water across all the fields. Now, not only did Hamas stop to burn them, and if you can see my mouse, you can see underneath them is the black burnt rubber residue. These could be found burnt across all the fields. So they stopped and they took the time to do that. This here is the cow shed where they keep the feed for the cows at kibbutz Alumim. Hamas terrorists stop there, set it on fire and lit explosives. And the whole structure really just completely collapsed. I think Carly, when you came to visit, it already collapsed on the floor. So you didn’t see the structure in its state of collapse. Hamas also attacked the animals. Don’t forget this area is responsible for the dairying, it’s also responsible for a lot of poultry.
This is Eran Braverman standing in kibbutz Alumim. This is one of the chicken coops there where Hamas killed over 300,000 chickens. In this chicken coop where he was standing, they were all burnt alive, it was disgusting. I turned up a few weeks later and it still smelt and they had to bury all the chicken carcasses on the other side of the road of the kibbutz to stop the spread of disease. This is the chicken coop in kibbutz Nir Oz. So you can see this was not just in one place, these are the scenes across the whole region. This is the chicken coop of kibbutz Nir Oz. They were lucky they had just sent the poultry out and they were about to clean it, so there were no chickens killed here, but the whole structure, it’s rendered completely unusable. These are the greenhouses out in fields that produced some of the, they were the largest producers of the sweet pepper bite. You know the small red peppers that you get in the Israeli salads or at breakfast if you’re visiting in the hotel, this is where they were produced and this is where they destroyed the greenhouses.
Wherever they could, they burnt the greenhouses and where they couldn’t, they took knives and slashed the nets to make holes and again rendered them useless because the pests come in. This is another view of some of those sweet red pepper bites rotting away in the greenhouse. And this is actually a part of the packing house of one of the kibbutzims, so they harvest the produce and they actually pack it on site. You can see that no one is using that right now. This is an important CCTV footage clip from actually kibbutz Alumim. You can see the date, 7th of October. You can see the time 10:34, over here are Thai and Nepalese workers being led away by Hamas. In this kibbutz alone, there were 22 foreign workers killed, 10 of them from Nepal, 12 of them from Thailand. And one of them, Bipin from Nepal, is still being held hostage.
So they also attacked the workers knowing that they’re the lifeline of agriculture in Israel. Why else attack them? They’re not Israeli, they weren’t Jewish. And the other thing I wanted to point in this clip is here on the right hand side, if you follow my mouse, this is the milk tank because this is the dairy for the kibbutz. And they purposely shot holes in the tank that holds the milk. And you can see the milk running out there across the road. This is an awful picture. This is the inside of the house where the foreign workers lived and were burned alive. Eran Braverman, who you saw in the previous picture, standing in the burnt chicken coop stand up here two days later. And he tried to count the bodies to report them to the authority. And they discovered there was actually 19 bodies he said.
And it took a few weeks with the forensic archaeologist to identify actually there were 19 bodies, 22 bodies actually burnt inside. So that was where the foreign workers were living. And this I wanted to share, this is the last picture because this was the image and the moment where we understood and it took us about six weeks that the attack by Hamas on the agriculture was not random. It was well-planned, strategic and intentional. So I was standing in kibbutz Nahal Oz, with the head of the agriculture, a guy called Moran Freibach and we’re standing in the tractor yard near his burnout tractor. And he said to me, “Danielle, come here, I want to show you something.” I thought, all right, so I walk across the yard and I looked down and that’s what he points to. And I thought, well what the hell is that? I don’t know what that is. And he said, “This is an irrigation control box.”
This is the box, the plastic, inside if you follow my mouse is a computer chipboard. And this is the aerial, “We use it by radio and we use it to control on and off all the irrigation for all of the fields of kibbutz Now we have 40 of them scattered across all of the fields and every single one of them was destroyed like this. And that was the moment the penny dropped for us. And we understood that what Hamas did, was incredibly intentional.” Now you might ask yourselves why. Why would Hamas do that? Why when their clear target was also the population, the people, the atrocities they committed against the people. Why take the time far away from the community centres of the kibbutz and destroy the agriculture? And when you think about it for a moment, I think the answer is very clear and it’s threefold.
The first is that I say, I think Hamas understood better than any of us even, what real Zionism means and what the connection between Israelis and these communities and their land is and was. And they understood very clearly that if they could break that connection and destroy the agriculture, there would be nothing else for them to do there. The second reason, what they understood very well is that agriculture here underpins the economy and by destroying it, they’re going for the heart of the economy for the whole region. And the third thing also is food security. Food security for the state of Israel by attacking the agricultural heartlands and taking out the irrigation, the equipment, the infrastructure, they’re directing food security, which is absolutely critical.
And why do you think this has been a story that you know, hasn’t reached many newspapers, et cetera? You know, there was one deep dive piece in the Wall Street Journal. You know, there’s been a little bit of coverage here and there, but six, seven months in, I still think many would consider this the untold story.
Yeah, I think the reason’s probably twofold and sometimes it baffles me. 'cause obviously this is all I’m dealing with day and night. I think on the one hand there were so many enormous stories of human suffering that obviously the press attention was drawn there. I can tell you anecdotally, I actually took a delegation of foreign press down and as soon as they could see Gaza from some of the farms, that’s all they wanted to talk about. What’s that smoke? What’s that city in Gaza? You know, there’s a clear bias in my view of what the press would like to report about. I think the second thing is we have to understand who the population are, that have been badly affected. And they are the farmers. And farmers, if you know any farmers, especially Israeli farmers, don’t want to talk to the press. They’re not really interested in telling their stories. What they want to do is to be left alone, to go back to their fields and do their job. And so it’s really been upon a very small party of people, including ourselves, to try and get that message out there.
So what’s been the longer term damage? You know, you obviously touched on on the loss of life and the immediate horrors in the hours that followed, but where are we now if we look forwards six months in terms of the long-term damage to the area?
So unfortunately I think we’re almost, not exactly but pretty much in the same place. And I think the damage was absolutely vast. I think it actually presented a real existential crisis for the farmers in the agricultural sector. Just to give you a sense, the estimates then still relevant now. You know, the farmers couldn’t get back to their fields to farm. They lost entire harvests within the first two months. We already estimated approximately half a billion dollars of lost income. And obviously that’s ongoing. We estimated approximately $25 million of just equipment damage. So just tractors and irrigation pipes, not accounting for infrastructure damage, which is so vast. I mean I can tell you anecdotally that the head of the field crops for the kibbutz that owns that greenhouse, when he took me out there, he said to me, “Danielle, I don’t even know how to begin to recover this. Where do we start? We lost the income, we have no spare funds. How do we even begin to rehabilitate something of this size?”
And there’s obviously animals that have lost. I think one of the key impacts actually, Carly, has been the soil. And this isn’t spoken about a lot. Sometimes soil become a sexy subject and sometimes people don’t really want to talk about it. But one of the key damages actually came from our tanks themselves. The tanks have rolled over the fields as they turn into battlefields and actually compacted the soil with their weight. And that really terribly affects the fertility of the soil, not just for this season, but even for years and years to come. So there’s got to be a huge job rehabilitating the soil, bringing back the equipment. And I think one of the other key challenges, which is still felt today, is the lack of workers. I can’t remember if I mentioned earlier, but 30,000 workers, farm workers fled Israel. We lost almost overnight. Some of them are coming back.
There are ad hoc measures here and there, with different governments to bring workers in. The situation is not resolved and it’s incredibly damaging. And I think it’s most damaging actually to the smaller medium scale farmers. Those really of the moshavim and not of the kibbutzim. And many of those have either already gone bankrupt or on their way to going bankrupt. It’s a real existential crisis for a lot of these farmers. And I think also it would be a miss of me not to mention the food security impact on the state of Israel itself. I remember being in the shops, you know, you could see the prices of produce had double digits overnight almost for some of the basic staples across Israel. And we were forced to import huge amounts of food almost overnight. I know between October to December, we increased our foreign imports of food by over 60,000 tonnes, which is absolutely huge.
And I think that reveals to us, also our vulnerabilities moving forward too when we talk about impact because where are we importing from? We were importing tomatoes and things from places like Turkey, and Turkey in the last month, I think, or six weeks ago actually announced a export bounty Israel. So we don’t want to be dependent on those. So the impact is still acutely felt even today. And I think we’re going to see the impact right now, medium term and long term unless actually rehabilitate in a smart way.
So for anyone who’s planning a trip to Israel in the coming months, I really advocate for going to meet with the farmers from the Gaza Envelope. You are not going to find a more inspiring group of people, but Danielle, perhaps for those who aren’t going to make it there anytime soon, you can just share a few stories of the the amazing people that you and I have met, you know, who under rocket fire with Hamas still in the kibbutz on the 8th and 9th and 10th of October, you know, went back out under fire and you know how these farmers are holding up today.
Yeah, definitely. So anyone that wants to come down, it would be my honour to share and showcase our incredible farmers. So when I’m hosting visits and before I introduce the farmers because they’re too humble to say anything like this, I often remind our visitors that actually in this situation when we’re at war, I think it forces us as a nation to understand how many heroes we really have in our country. And I always say that heroes are not just in uniform going off to physical, they’re not just the single parents left at home, you know, trying to handle a partner of fighting the kids, the house work and everything, which is a nightmare. They’re also our farmers. Our farmers are true heroes in this scenario. And as Carly said, you know, so many of them on October the 7th, spent the day holding the doors to their shelters, praying that Hamas was not going to get in, losing family members, losing their friends, being evacuated out that night on October the 7th, and waking up to a new very dark world on October the 8th.
Yet so many of these farmers on October the 8th and October the 9th were the only population really heading back to the area as opposed to staying away. And they were the farmers of course, I wanted to share a few stories of who they are and what they were doing. I don’t have a picture of them unfortunately, but just to give you a sense, there were two guys at kibbutz Kissufim, they were responsible for the dairy and they called Akhikam who was the Head of Agriculture at Kissufim on October the 8th. And they said, “Akhikam listen, we have to go back. The cows have got no water, it’s very hot, someone has to go back and look after the cows.” And he said, “Okay, but please be careful, the area is not secure, Hamas is still there.” And they said, “Okay, don’t worry, we’ll be careful, we’ll go together.” So they actually walked into the dairy at Kissufim and there were three Hamas terrorists waiting inside and they were both murdered there in cold blood and then the Israeli helicopters came down and blew up the whole dairy to get rid of the terrorists too.
So the other farmers who have similar stories of heroism, I want to introduce you just to a few of them. This is Moran, Moran I mentioned before. Moran is the Head of Agriculture for kibbutz Nahal Oz. He’s also today the Head of Security for kibbutz Nahal Oz because the former Head of Security was killed on October the 7th. Moran has five kids. On October the 7th, as I said, he spent the day in his safe room holding the handle to the door. His was the kibbutz where Hamas took out Tomer, a 17-year-old boy and asked him to knock on the doors and get the residents to come out and they knocked on Moran’s door and they were all silent and somehow they survived. And the next day Moran went back and he said, “If Hamas came to break my connection with my land, a victory is not just getting our hostages back, it’s not just getting rid of Hamas, it’s also making our fields green again.” So if you came to visit Moran, this is his kibbutz, he would also take you to this point on the edge of the kibbutz.
This is the edge of kibbutz Nahal Oz. So this is the border of the kibbutz and just beyond this fence are the fields of Nahal Oz. And this here in the distance is Jabalya in Gaza. It’s 700 metres from the Gaza border. So I’m standing there with Moran and he’s telling me how he’s going to rebuild the kibbutz and they’re not going to go anywhere and that’s his victory. And I said to him, “But Moran like why or how is the field green? You know, this is 700 metres to the Gaza border.” And he said, “Because we took a tank out for protection and we went back to plough our fields under fire.” And that’s the kind of resilience I want you to get the impression of. This is Moti, he kills me when I say it. But Moti’s not young, he’s a late 70s and Moti’s from kibbutz Be'eri and he’s spent again the day October 7th holding the door to his safe room. He lost nearly a hundred friends and family members on October the 7th, he was evacuated out with his wife to Tel Aviv to a hotel. And he woke up in the morning on October the eighth and he thought, “What the hell am I doing here? I have to go back and sought out the agriculture.”
One of the key reasons, because you’ll see in a second, the Head of Agriculture kibbutz Be'eri was unconscious fighting for his life in the hospital. So Moti stood up, took it upon himself, and the first thing he did, armed with two IDF soldiers for protection, because if you know anything about the battle at Be'eri, Hamas were there, the battle went on for days. So he was assigned two IDF soldiers. He went out with the soldiers and rounded up the cows from between the tanks and brought them back. And then he went across the fields everywhere that Hamas had blown up, the irrigation pipes, he went off turning off the mains pipes to stop the water flooding the fields. So that’s the story of Moti. And the last one I want to share is Avida. You might recognise Avida, it’s a very hard story. Each time I tell it for him, it makes me cry. And every time I’m with him, he still manages to make me laugh.
So Avida from kibbutz Be'eri, the Head of Agriculture of kibbutz Be'eri on October the 7th, he was in his safe room with his wife Dana and his son Carmel, who was 15 and his daughter is 13. And they woke up regularly like everybody else, the sirens were going and they suddenly heard on the WhatsApp group and shots that Hamas had infiltrated the kibbutz. So he ran around the house with his son closing all the shutters, locking the door and he put a cow bell on the door so they would hear if Hamas actually came into the house. And he said, and then we ran back to the shelter, we were holding the door and it wasn’t long, they saw the messages on the WhatsApp group for the kibbutz about what was happening. And then the cow bell went and they knew Hamas had come in. And to cut a long story short, very difficult, on that day, Avida was shot through the door into his arm and his leg. His wife Dana was shot through the window and died in the safe room on that day.
And his son Carmel, who was 15, was also shot in his arms and they tied tourniquet round, Avida tied the tourniquet and they couldn’t save him. He bled out very, very slowly during the day and as he requested, they buried him with his surfboard. Avida and his daughter barely made it out with their lives. He makes me joke, Avida, you can see he’s quite a big guy. They actually had to take him out of the safe room window on a surfboard. And he said, “You know, you can imagine slapping someone my size out the window.” He made it to hospital where he was there rehabilitating for over five months and you can see that he lost his leg. Now what I want to tell you about Avida, is that if you’d have gone to Tele Shamet to visit him while he was spending the months there, you might not have found him.
What Avida did is he told his doctors, “Listen, I’m just going to go downstairs for some pancakes.” And they’d all say, “Okay, okay.” And really what happened is Moti would come to the hospital, collect Avida and drive him back down to Be'eri. So he would go back out to the fields and one of the most moving pictures for me was to see Avida with his one leg. He’s now got a brilliant fake leg, but actually with his one leg and his fake leg back out in the fields of Be'eri, plotting not only going to how they going to replant and rebuild but how they’re going to emerge much stronger. And so all of these farmers to my minds are completely unsung heroes. And they’ve been out there really from October the 8th trying to rebuild everything that Hamas destroyed.
And the only thing they kept telling me is, “Danielle, we are moving forward no matter what, no matter what, we will be out there, we will be ploughing our fields, we will grow back stronger and we will be green again here in the desert, the only thing we’re checking is over our shoulder. Who is standing there? Is the government there?” I don’t know. And so our role is actually to make sure that they feel they have the support so they can be confident and keep running ahead forward. So that’s some of our farm heroes who are just incredible human beings and some of our heroes.
So when our audience hears about the scale of the challenge now facing the agricultural community and Israel’s farmers, you know, it can be hard to see a way through it and feel very daunting. So perhaps you can help us understand where ReGrow and the team of experts you’ve put together came in, but also what is the first few months look like and what’s the the next steps?
Yeah, great. So I can tell you in all honesty, it also feels quite overwhelming to me and to the farmers. But we really are determined to try and make a difference. So to just give you a little bit of the backstory of ReGrow. So as Carly mentioned in the beginning, Iran and Israeli agricultural NGO, that before October the 7th, our main focus of work was really on tackling global hunger with Israeli agricultural expertise while investing in agricultural innovation in Israel. And it was October the 11th, I was doing the general assembly meeting for the NGO and because most of the members Israeli in true Israeli star, they all start shouting at me, “Danielle, why have you not pivoted the organisation already on October the 11th to support the farmers in Israel that are facing an absolutely huge crisis?”
And so that’s exactly what we did. We established ReGrow Israel on October the 12th and we asked ourselves where is our added value? What is the real challenge and what should we do about it? And we knew from day one that what we had to do was adopt the model that made Israel so successful. There’s pictures you saw at the beginning about Israel’s agricultural transformation and what made that work? And that secret is actually what we call the golden triangle. So I’ll take a step back and tell you that before October the 7th, we were inundated with delegations from all around the world, you know, presidents, prime ministers, ministers of agriculture, UN head and officials, CEOs of big companies like Jack Ma from Alibaba. And they would all come with the same question, which was, how did you do this in Israel, it makes no sense? And if you’ve done it, why can’t we? And can you help us?
And a lot of the questions and answers that I heard, given to how did you do it, people used to say it’s because of drip irrigation in the kibbutz and I knew that was not the real answer. So we actually wrote a case study with Tony Blair and his team about what was it that made Israel really succeed? What’s that secret ingredient to Israel’s success and what could be replicated? And in the case study, the key secret that we found is what we termed the golden triangle. I want to explain it to you and then I’ll give you a real tangible example of how it works in practise. So what Israel did, which was so smart, right from the beginning and which many countries around the world today still do not do, is it built this golden triangle, which is basically agricultural innovation around the farmer.
You can see the farmer is here in the centre, the farmer is the most important player in anything that happens. And then around the farmer they put the scientists, the agronomists, and the economists, the agronomists are those that are out in the field helping the farmers understand like how do you really grow a tomato? How do I do the irrigation? And of course the private sector. And the only mission for this whole triangle is to serve the need of the farmer. So any challenge that emerges to face the farmer, you have all of these players work together with the farmer to solve it. Now that sounds quite abstract, so I want to make it very real for you and share an example. And this is the amazing example which I want to share. So I dunno if any of you have eaten the Israeli dates, they’re delicious and they’re also a great plant for the farmers to grow.
They’re very profitable and it takes a long time for the palm tree to grow and that’s how they grow. One day, one of these big date palms, beautiful date palms just fell over and died and everybody panicked, what the hell is going on? And so they actually went to check the date palm and on further inspection what they noticed was this little creature called a red palm weevil. What it does is it burrows itself inside the tree, underneath and eats it from the inside out. So you don’t actually know the tree is sick until it’s too late. The tree then dies and the weevil jumps to the next tree and you have a contagion issue on your hands. As soon as that happened, same day, the golden triangle sprang into action. And what they did, first of all is they did a massive PR campaign across the country. If you see a dead palm tree, call our hotline, we’re going to swoop in, Covid-star-hazmat suits, quarantine the area and make sure it doesn’t spread. And then the ideas start coming in.
What’s our solution? How do we save our farmers? The first idea, because it’s Israel, everyone has a good idea. The first idea came in from a soldier in the army. He called up and he said, listen in the army, my job is to train dogs to sniff out dynamite. I think we can train the dogs to sniff out the weevil. Now again, because it’s Israel, no one said don’t be stupid, that’s a rubbish idea. What they said is, that’s interesting, let’s try it. So together with the scientists, the agronomists, the farmers, they set up these dog sniffing stations and it worked. They trained the dogs to sniff out this weevil. The second solution came from the scientists, at the Volcani Institute. They said trees are not too dissimilar to humans and when people get sick, one of the first signs is that they get a fever. And so they said the same happens with trees, they end up with an elevated temperature.
What they suggested to do was actually to fly drones with infrared cameras over the tree canopies. And anytime they saw an elevated temperature, they knew there was an infestation, that also worked. And the last idea came from another soldier in the army. He said he was an engineer, he was responsible for developing the sensors that they were putting underground to detect the vibrations from Hamas when they were digging the tunnels from Gaza and he said, I think I can adjust the algorithms, adjust the sensors and we’ll put them in the trees. They said, fine. So I won’t ask for a show of hands, we can’t see. But one of those solutions, the last one actually made it, it was commercialised, it saved the issue and is now being sold across the Middle East. So that’s the golden triangle in action. And we knew from day one, we need to rebuild the golden triangle around the farmers. And that’s exactly what we did. And it was quite an incredible process because really within the space of a week, two weeks, every single phone call we made, everybody said yes first.
We had the farmers, we have all the kibbutzim and all the moshavim in our golden triangle. They became founding partners to ReGrow. We brought on board the top scientists and agronomists. We build a built a national sized team of Israeli agricultural experts to actually work with the farmers. And of course we’ve got very strong connections with the private sector through startup nation central and others. And unfortunately we can’t really ignore the role of government regional councils and so we’re also working with them. So ReGrow started like that. We built very quickly the golden triangle and then we went out to the fields. And I want to show you this is very important. Our experts don’t remain in their fancy offices, they’re out in the fields with the farmers.
And this is just one of those images of the top experts across the country, here is Professor Yoram Kapulnik, former Director General of all agricultural research in Israel, standing out there in the fields, meeting the farmers. And we quickly mapped out what the hell is the situation right now and what’s the plan going forward? And we very quickly understood that we need a two-phase response both to deal with the emergency and to deal with the medium and long-term regrowth. I dunno if you want me to move into the emergency piece, Carly and the ReGrow or to pause.
Thank you. So, if we just divide this up as you are starting to do with, you know, what did the farmers need in the first week, two, three weeks after October 7th and where are we now? Six months later.
Okay, fantastic. And I think we can stop the share now as well. All right, I think in the first few weeks after October the 7th, the farmers were completely in shock. They’d lost their labour overnight. And I think the most important thing right in those first few weeks was actually getting the volunteers in to salvage any harvest that were possible. It wasn’t actually possible to get everywhere. I mean a lot of it was closed military area. And that was really needed. Afterwards came the real emergency need when we started to understand the scale of the destruction. And I think I would split the emergency need into two.
First is the fact that when Hamas came, as you saw, they intentionally destroyed and stole and blew up equipment. The farmers had no equipment to work with, in kibbutz Alumim as an example. They kept having to go next door to kibbutz Nahal Oz and bringing their cow feed machine across, several times a week. People were sharing equipment across all of the agricultural communities and there was not enough to go around. It was really quite a dramatic situation. Thankfully we have, since we estimated it was about $25 million worth of direct damage to equipment at ReGrow right now we have raised all of the money that’s needed to replace every single piece of agricultural equipment that was damaged or destroyed on October 7th. And I can tell you some of the first tractors rolled into some of the kibbutzim last week, which was fantastic to see new tractors back on the ground, new irrigation pipes being set up and the farmers slowly, slowly getting back to work.
There are still areas today that they still cannot access. And I think the second part of the emergency is still the labour issue. Now of course there are volunteers here and there and of course we’ve got working and the government’s pushing to get more foreign workers back. But the solutions that the farmers are asking for are ones that will actually help them introduce automation and technologies that can help 'em reduce dependence on foreign labour immediately. And according to the farmer’s requests and our experts analysis, we’re looking at two key projects in that sense. One is to automate the dairy industry across the region and the second is to work with all the small medium farmers in the moshavim who really are on the edge of bankruptcy, if I’m honest, and help them get back on their feet and to grow back stronger by introducing basic automations like sprayers and soil and things like that. Once we’ve done that, I think we can start to really look strategically at the medium to long term.
And can you put some numbers around, you know, how much does a tractor cost today that is considered essential for a farmer to do their role? And you know, people may be thinking, where is the role of government here? Where is the role of the regional council? Where is the role of insurance? Just how is all that shaping out?
Yep, definitely. So tractors, if we’re speaking practically can cost anywhere between $50,000, for a small Landini kind of tractor, up to $378,000, is the price I saw today of the big John Deere workhorse tractor that all the kibbutzim need. There is a role for, not insurance, but something called . So insurance in this case is actually void because it was an act of war. What the government does in that instance is activates something called . The challenge that farmers have faced with that is that they actually send out a surveyor, they assess the cost of the damage. So they would say to you, Carly, it’s very nice that you had that tractor on October 7th, but it was actually four years old and so whilst to buy a new one it’ll cost you $378,000. We’re actually only going to give you a hundred thousand dollars.
So the farmers were facing this critical financing gap and that’s the gap that right now we’re able to fill. There is a big question about where is the government and what should the role of government be, especially vis-a-vis philanthropy. I think it’s a very important question. I think it’s something that as ReGrow, we are trying to never, ever duplicate the government or give them an excuse not to enter. I think the reality on the ground is such that the government for whatever reason is still not entering or doing something and therefore there’s a real emergency to be addressed and lots of different entities are stepping up. And that’s a unique situation, not just, it’s not really unique, it’s not just for agriculture, but across all the other elements as well to my mind, including mental health and other spaces where we could argue for the role of government, but they haven’t yet shown up.
And some of these problems feel like, they can be solved quite frankly by money. You know, if you need tractors, there are philanthropic funds out there. But one of the biggest issues for farmers now is the loss of foreign workers. But in terms of Palestinian workers who were there pre-October 7th, but also workers from elsewhere around the world, now there’s been lots of different programmes suggested, there’s obviously been a huge volunteering effort across Israel. There’s also been workers brought from Malawi and and other countries. But from everything I’m hearing and learning, this is actually the the biggest problem for farmers to think about how to solve and one where, well-intentioned orange pickers are not necessarily solving the problem. So how are you seeing that issue and what are some of the suggested solutions?
Yeah, this is probably one of the largest issues that the farmers are facing tangibly every day. Just to give a sense of the numbers, we lost overnight about 30,000 foreign farm workers. Approximately two thirds were Palestinians and one third 10,000 were foreigners. If you go to the farmers and you ask them what do you want to help solve this challenge, they will tell you, I want my old Thai worker back. The reason being, and the challenge we’re facing with volunteers is that agriculture is not something that anybody can do. It’s actually kind of hard work, but it’s a real profession, you know, you have to know what you’re doing. You need need to know how to operate a tractor, you need to know how to plant, you need to know how to plough and to pick.
So you do have that whole element of training. I think the volunteers, however well intentioned and however great the impact, I think it poses a logistical challenge quite often for the farmers and a knowledge challenge, there’s a huge knowledge gap and it takes a lot of resources to invest in their knowledge until they’re actually capable, if at all of actually working at the level required. The sense I get from our stakeholders on the ground is give it a year, all the farm workers will be back. And so therefore the question is what’s the strategic investment today? And we’ve spent countless days, weeks, even on site visits with the experts and the farmers and workshops trying to say, well what’s the smart solution here?
And the feedback we’re getting, and we try to follow the experts and the farmers every time, is to introduce off-the-shelf ready technologies that help the farmers automate. So for example, if you introduced an automatic sprayer into the greenhouses, it reduces the dependence on labour by 300%, which is huge. And at the same time, not only does that help them with the labour challenge, it actually sets them up for stronger, productive, profitable and more efficient performance in the future. So we went to the farmers very open saying, what do you need and what do you want? And that’s where they landed, it’s not as simple as just throwing money at the problem.
Some of the farmers are reluctant to actually use all of their money on purchasing some of this off-the-shelf technologies. This is the mindset of the farm. You have to understand completely risk averse. They told me that they want two extra things. Number one, they want expert help to identify which technology. Okay, you want an automatic sprayer. There are about 20 companies who will all try and convince you that their sprayer is the best one for you. They want expert guidance on saying, which sprayers are best for our greenhouses? Can you help train us on the equipment and can you hold our hands quite practically walking through the adoption of these technologies. And they also want help with the financing. We don’t believe we should give a grant for every piece of equipment. And actually we are looking at partnering with Ogen, which is providing low cost loans to help the farmers close the gap.
And you’ve just touched on the the kind of final element which you know, Israel is famous for being the startup nation, the technology and innovation powerhouse. What type of technological innovations are you starting to see emerge and what do you think are the most promising for the farmers right now?
Well there’s technological innovation across so many fields. I think if we look big picture, I think the promise is in AI, artificial intelligence. You have to understand today agriculture is so high tech. You’ve got sensors everywhere, collecting immense amount of data that you could quite comfortably sit in your coffee shop in Tel Aviv, sipping on your coffee, you know, controlling your farm and reading out your data. The idea is that all of the AI applications will help you understand what the data tells you and take decisions. So there’s technology coming out everywhere. I think we have to prioritise and look at which technologies a priority today. And that’s probably honestly the proven technologies and which technologies are a priority for tomorrow and they’re the ones that still need testing. And whether it could be upon us to pilot some of these almost ready technologies.
And the best example of that that I have is really in the dairy industry. All the dairy cow sheds across the Western Negev all asked us for help in testing the same solution. It’s an automation solution which makes all of the dairy much more automated efficient, way less dependent on human labour. There’s three key technologies they’re interested in and none of them have been proven in that sense in Israel. So they wanted our help to roll out a pilot, check if they’re really working as they should and then everyone would feel comfortable to adopt. So I think on the technology front, I think automation is going to be key. And I think when we’re ready, the application of AI at scale to all of the data that the area is generating is going to be very interesting. And if you want me to share my big hopes and dreams for the region again is not just to get the farmers back on their feet and not just to make sure that they can grow back stronger, but we mustn’t forget that this is the area where Israel made the desert bloom.
This is the area where people from all around the world come to is from to Israel to learn from. And I hope, and I’ve already started to see it, that once again people are going to come to learn from all of the climate resilient, automatic AI technologies that these farmers are going to start to implement. So we hope that’s what we’ll see. Hopefully once it’s quiet again soon.
Now, in your previous role at Volcani, you did a lot around taking Israeli knowhow and expertise out to parts of the world fail facing real challenges in their agricultural sector.
Yup
In at that point, Israel really didn’t need a lot of those challenges and really had better solutions in place. Is there much now that you feel like you’ve brought back from your, you know, journey out to Africa or elsewhere that perhaps now Israel is seeing more of a necessity in,
I’m not almost sure it’s about the technology. I think it’s actually about the approach. We teach the golden triangle to presidents and ministers of agriculture around the world. It’s a lot about what we lecture on and advise on. And I think restructuring that golden triangle around the farmers of the Western Negev and probably soon around the farmers in the north is the key thing that we’ve brought back. I can tell you one of the key things we’re looking at globally is also regenerative agriculture. Regenerative agriculture really puts the soil at the focus, it’s become very trendy. I’m not sure everybody agrees about what it actually means, but it’s about preserving your soil. And I think that’s coming back more to Israel now.
We are being very mindful of how we rehabilitate the souls here in Israel and actually make sure that they will be productive and fertile once again despite all the damage. And I think the last thing that we’re going to see in even greater push on is all the climate resilient technology. Again saying that this is the desert, how do we make more, for example, climate resilient fruit trees, fruit trees are way more profitable than the field crops like potatoes. We have great requests from the farmers to help them introduce new fruit tree crops, let’s say avocados or mangoes into the area. And to do that, they’re quite water intensive. So they’re the kind of technologies and challenges and solutions that of course we once taught abroad, but now we’re trying to bring back here and see if it makes a difference.
And you know, in the last couple of minutes, for people who are new to understanding the challenges the agricultural industry are facing or looking for ways to help and support, what would you suggest?
Number one, if you want to come and visit in person, that would be great. We’d be very happy to host you and show you in real life. I think the second thing is you have to work out what you’re really interested in. If you are interested in supporting the farmers, get back on their feet and make sure they can grow back stronger, would be very, very happy to chat from Regrow Israel about the projects that we’re running. I think the most exciting one right now is about helping the small to medium scale farmers in the moshavim to ensure they’re not going bankrupt to make sure they know we’ve got their back.
That’s the programme where we’re purchasing off-the-shelf technologies that are ready for them to help them automate, matching it with the low cost debt programme anywhere from $20,000 to $50,000. That’s the programme hopefully we’re launching in the next quarter. I think that’s probably the most tangible way that we’re really engaging right now.
And I would just add that for those of you with media contacts or a broad network of outreach, you know, as Danielle has shared, this is still a story that hasn’t featured and Danielle and her team at Regrow, you know, can certainly share information. They’ve got a great website. So go ahead and Google Regrow Israel and tell those in your network about this particular untold story of October 7th and the long-term damage. ReGrow Israel can receive funds in the US and globally, so you can check out everything on their website. Danielle, thank you. And thank you for sticking
Thank you very much.
with us, as you struggle through pneumonia and managing not to,
They’re a bit shiny.
not to cough. Not to cough relentlessly. You can cough now. So we appreciate you, you struggling through there. And again, I just want to say thank you as somebody who, you know, can’t claim to have been an agricultural expert on October 7th or 8th or 9th, you’ve really helped us understand the scale of the issue being faced. And you know, the farmers are really on the front lines of building Israel back and as you say of the real connection between Israel and the land and the importance of that land to the story of Israel and the Jewish people. So thank you very much.
Thanks Carly. Thank you very much.