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Made in Israel: Water | The 700 Club | YouTubeToText
YouTube Transcript: Made in Israel: Water
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More than half of this country's land is desert
desert
and we have a severe water shortage.
Moses led us to Israel, a country that
has no oil, no water, not too good soil,
and we had to make the best out of it.
Thousands of years ago, Moses had to
strike a rock to get water in the
desert. Well, today, Israelis are taking
a slightly different approach using
technology and creativity. [Music]
[Music]
In Israel, the main sources of drinking
water are the Sea of Galilee and two
underground aquifers.
If rainfall is short, so is the nation's
water supply.
In 1953, Israel started building the
National Water Carrier, a system of
pipelines, canals, and reservoirs that
carry water from the Sea of Galilee to
the rest of Israel. So, we didn't have
water. Okay, we developed water
technology. One of the things that
Israel has excelled in is taking
what some people would see as risk
factors or as curses and turning them
into blessings.
From the time of Bilam, the Jewish
people have always been able to somehow
turn the curse into a blessing.
The pipelines were a good start, but
Israel's freshwater supply wasn't enough
to support a growing country. So,
Israelis started looking west to the Mediterranean.
For thousands of years, the
Mediterranean Sea was the center of the
ancient world. The crossroads between
Europe, Asia, and Africa.
And now, it's one of Israel's greatest
natural resources.
Israel is desalinating so much of its
drinking water. The majority of our
drinking water's origin will be the
Mediterranean Sea by the end of next year.
year.
Today, Israel produces 450 million cubic
meters of drinkable water a day.
Through a process called seawater
reverse osmosis, water can go from the
ocean to the faucet in less than 90
minutes. The Israeli technology is now
used in more than 40 countries around
the world. And thanks to the
Mediterranean, Israel may soon have
something that was once unthinkable.
a water surplus
in this country. We don't have much
water except somehow
by the end of this decade, Israel is
going to become a net water exporter.
Just on today's news, there was a item
about how Israel is stepping up the
export of water to Jordan in order to
supply water for all the Syrian refugees
who are fleeing into Jordan.
While Israel produces drinking water
from the sea, many farmers are getting
water for their crops literally out of
Ancient Israelites used stones to
collect the dew every morning. Now, an
Israeli company is using plastic trays
to do the same. The trays were developed
by Talya Technologies, which means God's
due in Hebrew. Every morning, these
trays channel the dew straight into the
roots of the plants. They also prevent
weeds from growing between the plants
Israeli farmers have always made good
use of their water, but it wasn't long
before they realized that in order to
survive, they also needed to start
reusing it.
Today, Israel recycles 80% of its waste
water. The closest competitor is Spain
with 10%. So, we recycle more than eight
times more water than any other country
on the planet.
Israelis developed a way to purify waste
water using ultraviolet light. This
treated water is then used to irrigate crops.
crops.
If you use it for vegetables, then you
would like to clean it the extent that
you can almost drink it. So it is
treated to a very high degree. Today 60%
of the water that is irrigating fields
in Israel is produced water and not
natural water. And I'll give you an
example of our farm here on the kibuts.
We grow jojoba and we use only sewage
water only treated waste water to
irrigate our jojoba and this is done all
over Israel.
Israel may be short on fresh water, but
the country's negv desert is sitting on
an underground ocean, too salty to drink
or desalinate. So, Israeli settlers
found a new way to use it.
You cannot really fight nature. Nature
will fight you back. We found out after
the years that is better to cooperate
and to coordinate with what you've got.
Yavagan is one of a growing number of
Israelis who have left the ocean to go
fishing in the desert. They build fish
farms using the warm salty water from underground.
underground.
It's ideal for raising saltwater fish
like tilapia, sea bass, and baramundi.
The place here is working without
chemicals, without anything. It's very
healthy. It's friendly for the
environment and it's good for us in a
matter of the pocket. We are making good
money and this is by the bottom line.
At this kabutz in the negative desert,
even the fish waste is put to use. Every
week the water in these tanks is
replaced and pumped underground to
irrigate the nearby olive grove. The
fish waste in the water makes an ideal
natural fertilizer. As you can see on
the side, the olives are growing around
the farm, around the fish, and are doing
very well without any other chemicals,
only by the nutrients of the fish.
Israel has taken this idea to other
countries struggling with water and food shortages.
shortages.
We're taking African villages, teaching
them how to essentially build fish
farms. If you look at around Lake
Victoria, the Nile perch were dying and
Israelis are now going in to teach the
farmers how to grow them in ponds so
that you can actually continue to eat
the Nile perch.
Over the years, Israelis also found new
ways to use less water. And as always,
There's the story of the Arava
sometimes as 20 mm of rain annual fall
very harsh climate and still thanks to
drip irrigation this became the
vegetable barn of Israel 65% of
vegetable export out of Israel mainly to
Europe is coming from the Arava
today even the driest parts of the
desert are blooming with help from a
process called drip irrigation. The idea
is older than the state of Israel itself.
itself.
When the first settlers came here, young
people came from the city and they
wanted to be farmers and they came to Kibutserim
Kibutserim
and they faced many challenges.
arid land, high salinity,
not enough water
and there was even a time when they
considered moving to another place. But
then Benurion came who was a leader with
a real vision and he said guys if you
want to move it's okay but further south
not back to the north and we stayed here
and we continued and we did some
experiment but still we were struggling.
Then we met the guy who invented drip irrigation.
irrigation.
That guy was an engineer named Simka
Blas. He got the idea for drip
irrigation after seeing a tree that was
larger than the others around it. After
digging around the roots, he found it
was being watered by a leak in an
underground pipe. So this gave him the
idea. But it took him some years
actually until a plastic was introduced
to start and and make experiments with
drippers that will emit water in small
drops and this is basically drip irrigation.
irrigation.
Bloss met the farmers of Kabutz Hatsarim
and together they started a company
called Netaphen which means drops of
water in Hebrew. Soon they boosted their
crop yield by 50% and used 40% less
water to do it.
Drip irrigation saves a lot of water.
Producing more, getting more, yet not
harming the environment.
For almost half a century, the company
has lived up to its slogan, grow more
with less. Not just in Israel, but in
110 countries around the world. From
sugarcane fields in the Philippines to
tea plantations in Tanzania.
You know, India is now our number one
country. The results looking at the
yield increase were amazing. 50% of the
farmers got an increase in yield between
25 and 50%. Another 25% of the farmers
got an increase in yield of up to 75%.
Napim even designed a system that works
solely on gravity for places like Peru,
where remote mountain farmers don't have electricity.
electricity.
The plant doesn't know the difference.
The plant doesn't know that you don't
have a $20,000 computer behind the
dripper. And it works beautifully.
Everyone is talking about water
scarcity. 70% of the water that we have
available in the world is used for agriculture.
agriculture.
Now if we save only 15%
in agriculture, we can more than double
the available water for drinking and sanitation.
sanitation.
In Hebrew we have a a term which is
called tunam
which is fixing the world. And this is
basically what repatriation does. This
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