The government is pushing for the adoption of Israeli technology to boost the agriculture industry and food security by increasing yield, improving land management, and enhancing farming techniques, among other things.

In an agritech business forum on Tuesday, economic development chief Arsenio Balisacan said “there is much to learn” from Israel in terms of innovations, considering that country faces many constraints, particularly with food supply and production, due to its mostly desert terrain.

“It’s very much at the heart of it,” Balisacan, the secretary of the Department of Economy, Planning and Development (DEPDev), said when asked how Israel’s tech fits into the government’s food security strategy.

“Because what we are trying to do is increase productivity for our agriculture, and make the cost of food lower, so that we can continue to manage inflation,” he said in an interview, noting that Israeli tech is focused on improving resilience.

He emphasized that this incorporation is a long-term process, as acquiring, adapting, spreading, and tailoring the technology to the local agriculture industry would take time.

“The technologies, we have to study them properly, if they fit in our ecosystem because you just cannot import technology and assume that it works. We have to fit them into our system, ensuring that the varieties will thrive in our system,” the DEPDev chief added.

Moreover, Balisacan assured that the technologies will reach the small-scale farmers, saying the goal is to attract solutions that fit smallholder agriculture.

When asked if the Philippines has technologies that can be exported to Israel and other countries, he said, “No, I think that there may be. I’m not quite sure what there are on the shelf,” noting that the whole idea is to access those technologies and get into the countries’ ecosystems.