Syngenta Foundation Turns To Israeli Start-Ups

With dry summers and hostile neighbors, Israel has been forced to innovate in the most crucial areas of agriculture, food, and water, turning the tiny nation into a powerhouse of agricultural technologies. Global investors have taken notice, pouring some $759 million of venture capital investments into Israel’s AgriFood tech sector over the past five years.

It’s an ecosystem that includes nearly 700 startup companies, over half of them founded over the past 10 years, indicating a sector which, despite its historical roots in Israel’s collectivist kibbutz movement, is characterized by a boom of new companies and innovations. Israeli companies tend to focus on solving specific problems, and are experts in precision agriculture and smart irrigation.

One of the latest organizations coming to Israel to engage with this booming industry is The Syngenta Foundation for Sustainable Agriculture. The foundation implements programs that help smallholder farmers become successful in their agricultural activities, become profitable, have more stable incomes, and better livelihoods.

Start-Up Nation Central sat down with Simon Winter, Syngenta Foundation’s Executive Director, on the foundation’s evolving engagement with SNC in Israel.
Start-Up Nation Central: What is the big problem that the Syngenta Foundation is trying to solve?

Simon Winter: Out of the 500 million or so smallholder farmers in the developing world, about 90% of them are not regularly included in markets, meaning they don’t have a regular source of income, that means they can’t afford to buy good quality inputs to have good production, to get a good source of income. So it’s a vicious circle they get stuck in, and we’re hoping to break that vicious circle through a combination of helping those farmers to access improved technologies, to de-risk technologies so that as the farmers use their savings or take out a loan to buy those technologies they don’t face too much risk in doing so. Then we help with the physical access and the knowledge that it takes to actually use those technologies productively. We look at how to help the farmers create value out of this, not just once, but on a continuous basis into the future.

SNC: What countries are you active in?

Winter: We are active in 10 countries at the moment. We have sizable programs in Senegal and Mali in West Africa. We have a small program in Nigeria that we hope to expand significantly. We’re active in Kenya and surrounding countries in East Africa. We’re also active in India, Bangladesh, Indonesia, China, Myanmar, and Cambodia.