Gov’t backs Israeli tech to boost agri industry

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 others.

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

“It's very much at the heart of it,” he said when asked how the latter’s tech fits into the government’s food security strategy.

 “Because what we are trying to do is to increase productivity for our agriculture, and make the cost of food lower, so that we can continue to manage inflation,” he said in an ambush interview, further highlighting 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 those are ones that fit into our ecosystem, because you just cannot import technology and assume that it works. We have to fit them into our system, ensuring that, [t]his kind of varieties thrives in our system,” DEPDev chief added.

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

Meanwhile, when asked if the Philippines currently has technologies that can be exported to Israel or other countries, he responded, “No I think that there may be. I'm not quite sure what there are in the shelf,” he said, noting that the whole idea is to access those technologies and get into the countries’ ecosystem.