Israel’s State of Climate Tech 2021

Opportunities & Barriers to Climate Tech in Israel

Challenge: Climate Smart Agriculture

212 companies of which 130 are startups ( 20% of all startups). These startups have raised a total of 950 million USD.

Numbers:

Climate Smart Agriculture

Technology Showcase: Of the 130 startups, 69 (53%) are precision agriculture companies. Why Precision Agriculture? Precision agriculture increases agricultural productivity while optimizing farmmanagement and more efficient use of water, pesticides, nutrients, and other inputs. This reduces emissions, increases soil health, and decreases expansion of agricultural areas and changes in land use. A major challenge for precision agriculture is developing implementations that are suitable and accessible to farmers, especially in developing countries. These are mostly small farm holders with low financial capabilities to implement new technologies.

Why Israel? The historical innovation of Israeli water-tech has facilitated the development of Israel’s strength in precision agriculture. Israel’s preexisting strength in ICT, data mining and software, together with expertise in the fields of drones and satellites, enable the adaptation of existing technologies into innovative agricultural solutions such as soil mapping,smart irrigation and fertigation systems, and satellites for precision agriculture. Of the 69 startups in precision agriculture, 42 (60%) were established from 2016 onwards, and 7 (10%) of these were established in 2019 and 2020. Collectively, they have raised 489 million USD, 51% of the total funding for Climate Smart Agriculture startups.

3 https://gfi.org/blog/israel-innovation-report/.

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