Drip irrigation is an effective tool for increasing agricultural productivity and thereby helping people to escape from poverty and food insecurity. This has been recognised by the award of this year’s World Food Prize to Israeli scientist Daniel Hillel, who has developed micro-irrigation techniques which replace inefficient flooding with methods of minimising water usage by determining and supplying the precise amount required.
The concept of drip irrigation itself has been around for more than a century, but it is only in the recent past that the use of drip irrigation techniques have started to become widespread. The recent popularity is due to a business innovation by Netafim, an Israeli company, which discovered a way of overcoming the natural reluctance of farmers to try any innovation which had a relatively high upfront cost, even if it promised substantial returns.
What Netafim did was to offer to install the IrriWise Crop Management System at its own expense, and take payment from the subsequent increase in crop yields. Netafim’s mission changed from “making the best drip irrigation equipment for customers” to “helping the world grow more with less”. Netafim now has a share of around one third of the global micro-irrigation equipment market.