Super-intensive agriculture: Israel offers advanced farming techniques to the world. (Special Advertising Supplement)

SUPER-INTENSIVE AGRICULTURE Israel offers advanced farming techniques to the world

Israel has emerged as a think-tank for world agriculture. In this very small country, the most advanced forms of food and fiber production have taken root. And many of the path-breaking and trend-setting equipment and inputs for the world's farming, poultry and ranching industries claim Israel as their birthplace.

Why has this country been able to play such a dynamic role in agricultural technology so out of proportion with its geographical size and the numbers of its active farming population? And why are Israeli products increasingly being utilized all over the world? Some of the major characteristics of Israeli agriculture that are responsible for this country's contributions to the advancement of modern farming and ranching include the following:

1 - Israel has a farming population receptive to new ideas and able to design, produce and market new agricultural technologies.

Most Jews who migrated to what is now the State of Israel to join kibbutzim (communal farms) did not have farming backgrounds. While this deprived the early Israeli farmers of the benefits of generations of …