Just a couple of hours after landing at Ben Gurion Airport on Sunday, November 4, 2018 after their long flight from Johannesburg, the 5 member South African delegation arrived at the Vulcani Agricultural Research Center in Rishon Leziyon for the first round of several briefings that were scheduled during their 4-day visit.
Participating in the delegation were:
Isla Feldman, National Chairman of JNF South Africa and founder of Food and Trees for Africa (FTFA) and founder of The Walter Sisulu Environmental Centre (WSEC);
Chris Wild, Director of FTFA;
Rogan Field, Production and infrastructure specialist at FTFA;
Riaan Visser, Head of Fundraising for WSEC; and
Benji Shulman, Executive Director of the South Africa-Israel Forum. Their Israeli guides were
Orna Toeg, Director of KKL-JNF's South Africa and UK Desks and KKL-JNF’s
Elisha Mizrahi.
The first lecture of the day was delivered by Professor
Itamar Glazer, Deputy Director for Research and Development at the Vulcani Center, who welcomed the group and presented an overview of the organization’s activities. He told them that the Vulcani Center was established in 1921 to assist the early pioneers in Israel to establish
agriculture.
“We are not a university,” Glazer emphasized. “The Vulcani Institute is a governmental agricultural
research organization that also deals with many other issues related to agriculture, such as
climate change and sustainability. We have almost 200 scientists and 300 students from the country’s leading universities, who come here to carry out research for advanced degrees.”
Glazer also told them that the Vulcani Center has strong relations with the agricultural industry in South Africa.
“This was a natural match because of our similar but complimentary climates. It is quick and easy to adapt our research in South Africa because the climate is similar, and because the seasons are complimentary there is no competition between our farmers.”
The next speaker from the Vulcani Center was Dr.
Yagil Osem of the Institute of Plant Sciences. He spoke of his research into managing water-limited forests in Mediterranean and
semi-arid environments, such as those found in Israel. He explained that while only 10 percent of the country is covered by woodland, the Israeli forests are highly valued and provide a wide variety of ecosystem services. “We were forced to conduct our own advanced research because 20 years ago, the only textbooks available spoke of light-limited forests and there was no information concerning forests impeded by a lack of
water. Today, after our research and development, we know exactly how our
forests are doing with regard water use, drought stress, and many other measurements. We can predict how forest fires will behave. In short, we have much more control today.”
The advanced research theme was taken a step further by Dr.
Offer Rozenstein of the Institute of Soil, Water, and Environmental Sciences at the Vulcani Center, who gave an overview of the Venus Project. The Venus Project is a mini-satellite venture which was developed jointly by Israel and France and enables monitoring the vegetation and environment from space. Rozenstein told the guests that the Venus satellite monitors the entire span of Israel every two days to a resolution of 5 meters. The information it provides he called “spectacular”.
“Using the information from Venus, we are able to support precision irrigation and fertilization of farmers’ fields to a degree unobtainable until recently. The ideal is to optimize the use of water, fertilizers, pesticides, and herbicides efficiently. In this way, we save twice, once in the cost of the material and then again in the environmental impact.”
The visitors spent the entire course of the talks listening intently, making notes and asking questions. The lengthy flight from South Africa seemed long forgotten.
Towards the end of their session at the Vulcani Center, delegation leader Isla Feldman told her hosts why she had founded the Food & Trees for Africa organization.
“It was 1994, just a few years after ANC leader Nelson Mandela had been released from prison, and as head of JNF South Africa, I was collecting money to buy trees in Israel. I realized then that there are places around me that are also in dire need of trees. I was looking at the absolutely treeless landscapes of the underdeveloped, segregated and overpopulated urban townships of South Africa - places like Soweto.”
Isla said that she decided to start an organization in South Africa which would copy KKL-JNF methods for South Africans, and that is how Trees for Africa was founded.
“The organization quickly developed into Food and Trees for Africa because,” she said, “these two elements are closely connected. I then founded WSEC, The Walter Sizulu Environmental Center. Today we educate 12,000 children annually on the benefits of environmental care.”
The delegation was then ferried to their Jerusalem hotel to rest from their long flight and their intensive morning in Rehovot, but not before visiting a moshav and a kibbutz, the two uniquely Israeli types of agricultural communities.