How meeting water challenges spurred a dynamic export industry – Israel

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Israel’s strategy has been long in the making, and relies on a complex framework of public finance, technology, policies, and institutions. Beginning in the 1960s, the Israeli government invested in state-owned enterprises focused on reducing irrigation water use, the single biggest consumer of water. One of these firms, Netafim, was a pioneer in drip irrigation, which improves the efficiency of irrigation to 95%, as compared to 50% using traditional flood irrigation. State investment, including long-term financing arrangements produced by the Ministry of Finance, has also been critical to the expansion of desalination, which now provides some 80% of […]