A Food Security Strategy
While far from the spotlight – particularly now, with focus understandably on the hostage deal – food security ranks high among the many challenges Israel has faced since Hamas invaded our country on October 7, 2023.
A reminder: the Hamas attack on southern Israel significantly harmed a region that ordinarily produces 75% of Israel’s total vegetable production, 20% of its fruit output and 6.5% of milk products. While our agriculture industry has clawed back – for example, tomato production now provides 90% of local market needs – it is still healing.
The war’s ramifications have sharpened Israel’s focus on food security this past year. Current activities in this context go well beyond continuing efforts to fight climate change’s negative impact, also relevant to the issue.
Highlighting our endeavors in this field, six Agriculture Ministry-led working groups recently presented the interim results of their collaboration launched in August 2024. True to our public-private partnership tradition, these groups included representatives of government, academia, and the private sector.
Their ongoing work is slated to lead up to the April unveiling of Israel’s National Plan for Food Security 2050. Befitting a strategy to ensure the supply of food to our citizens for the next 25 years, the objectives are clear: ensuring food production, setting goals for local production, integrating that local production and imports (based on risk assessment), promoting efficiency and innovation, as well as advancing sustainable food systems.
It is not surprising to see this issue move from the realm of government policy into the public sphere as well, as demonstrated by a noticeable increase in pertinent conferences held in Israel this past year. After all, food security is a vital subject with numerous inter-connected aspects.
Apropos inter-connectivity: in view of the affinity between ensuring food security and fighting climate change – including by attaining renewable energy goals – the country is beginning to see the spread of agrivoltaic pilots initiated by an Agriculture-Energy ministries partnership. These projects leverage the dual use of land to advance both solar energy and agriculture production, while minimizing the amount of land taken up.
Alternative protein solutions are another food security-related subject to keep an eye on. Aware of the potential, the Science and Technology Ministry issued a June tender for a joint research project in this field in conjunction with the Israeli branch of The Good Food Institute non-profit.
Alongside the critically important long-term food security strategy, related immediate-term socio-economic matters also weigh heavily on the country. The war’s negative affect on the agriculture sector hit the Israeli consumer hard, with fruit and vegetable prices spiking right up until October of this year.
Taking this challenge into account, the government provided an extensive social safety net. According to the Israeli NGO Latet’s 2024 Alternative Poverty Report, however, more than 10% of Israeli families now live in “severe nutritional insecurity.”
While naturally most of our food security activity is inward looking, the Foreign Ministry (my employer) continues decades of outward efforts by sharing our experts’ accumulated best practices. In line with the UN goal of ending hunger and improving nutrition, Israel’s official international development cooperation agency (MASHAV) hosts numerous capacity-building programs in food security, agriculture and climate change in Israel and abroad.
Ten such program participants from Nepal, two from Tanzania and another from Cambodia were murdered by Hamas on October 7, 2023. Another Nepali participant was kidnapped alive to Gaza, where the body of one of the murdered Tanzanians was also taken.
My colleague Tamar Yarden, who heads the Internship in Agriculture program, still bears the pain of that day but she also draws strength from what followed. Indeed, the program in which the tragic victims participated continued throughout the war, with most of its 4,000 university-educated participants remaining in Israel.
“At the end of the day it’s win-win-win,” Yarden says. “The students acquire skills they can take back home; our farmers get assistance; and Israel strengthens its relationships abroad.”
A 2021 study of Nepali participants by a Tel Aviv University master’s program student found that upon their return home, they were more likely to engage in agriculture as their livelihood than compatriots who did not attend the programs in Israel. Their revenues were also substantially higher.
These findings reflect Israel’s success in advancing food security capacity-building abroad, particularly in developing countries. A recent open-letter signed by more than 150 Nobel and World Food Prize laureates, raising alarm bells about the growing risk of world hunger, provides a sobering reminder of the importance of our cooperative activities in this field.
It would be an understatement to say that the past 15 months have been tough for Israel. Our deep-dive into food security, for ourselves and the world, demonstrates just how much we’ve maintained our sense of humanity during this challenging period.