Sustainability partners
We work with growers, companies, governments and aid organizations all over the world to make agriculture more profitable and sustainable.
Time to rethink our Food System
Agriculture sustainability, environment, and nutrition are linked. To achieve ZERO HUNGER, we must rethink how we grow our food and its impact on the planet’s limited resources. Precision irrigation helps farmers eliminate climate risks and make our food system more sustainable by enabling them to increase yields while using less water, fertilizer, energy, and crop protection.
Watch and learn how precision irrigation for sustainable agriculture can help farmers produce more food per hectare of land.
Three major impacts of precision irrigation
We’re facing three crucial challenges. Each one of these challenges is essential to the future of the planet – that’s why precision irrigation exists. It tackles all three of them, by enabling farmers to grow higher yields of better quality with fewer resources.
Climate is changing. Farming must change too.
By 2050, we’ll need to grow 70% more food to feed the world’s growing population. We’ll have to cope with changing rainfall patterns and frequent droughts. If you want to win as a farmer you need to reduce your dependency on the weather and take an active countermeasure. Precision irrigation helps farmers become climate resilient and more sustainable. Controlling the amount of water given to the plant is critical for achieving optimal yields.
Making the Most of Available Land
Arable land is in short supply due to monoculture, soil erosion, climate change, and over-intensive farming. Deforestation is not the answer. Increasing yield per hectare, while protecting soil fertility, is a more sustainable approach. Precision irrigation enables farmers to grow on any topography, field shape, or size. It turns land unfit for growing – arable. It gives plants more favorable growing conditions driving higher outputs, and enables multiple crop cycles per year.
Managing Water Scarcity
With agriculture using 70% of the planet’s fresh water, and droughts becoming more frequent, water-efficient farming is a global priority. Precision irrigation helps farmers get the most out of every drop by growing more crops using limited water supplies. Drip irrigation also allows the usage of recycled and/or saline water. Crops receive the exact amount of water that they need, when and where they need it. This increases water use efficiency by up to 50% compared to other irrigation methods.
Changing the economics of agriculture sustainability
Precision irrigation is an approach to sustainable agriculture that empowers growers to produce higher yields of better-quality crops – with less resources. It increases water productivity and fertilizer-use efficiency.
Regardless of the crop, climate, soil or region, men and women can grow more food using fewer resources, use agriculture to climb out of poverty and generate more profit, and live healthier, more empowered lives.
So our goal is a simple one – to make precision irrigation the most accessible and effective solution for growers around the world.
Sustainable agriculture development goals
Our sustainability action plan is aligned with the UN’s 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, which comprises 17 global goals supported by 169 targets. Right now, we’re making the biggest global impact by focusing on nine of those 17 goals:
"Producing food locally provides fresher food based on the need of the consumer, which decreases the supply chain, transportation costs, and carbon footprint."
Agriculture sustainability reporting
We’re big fans of transparency. That’s why we share all information, knowledge and experience openly and across multiple channels.
We also value transparency among our partners and associates. Qualities like openness and integrity help us build trust, which enables more productive collaboration. That in turn helps our partners and associates achieve greater success and generate more profit. The same goes for the suppliers, competitors and government agencies we do business with.
And when it comes to our own people, we promote and support them in every way possible to sustainable agriculture. While guaranteeing respect and equality, we work to attract, develop and retain talent wherever we find it. And of course, we ensure health, safety and human rights across the board.
To ensure we’re always making the most of corporate social sustainability, we also follow Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) principles. Netafim has published a GRI report every two years since 2011. We submit our Communication on Progress to the UN Global Compact LEAD every year. See our reports to get an overview of our recent performance.
Environmental agriculture sustainability
We’re committed to environmental sustainability in two important ways. First, by making precision irrigation the most effective way to grow, we’re empowering farmers to grow in a more sustainable way that’s also more profitable for them.
And second, we’re committed to running our own operations in more sustainable agriculture ways. That’s why we’re signatories of the UN’s CEO Water Mandate, and followers of the sustainable development goals outlined above.
Our environmental policy
Our environmental policy starts with our supply process. We always take an eco-friendly approach to product design, use minimal resources in all manufacturing and supply chain operations, reuse and recycle, and responsibly manage waste to enable agriculture sustainability.
To do this, we document and address all environmental impacts at every stage of the supply process, while also complying with all environmental legislation and regulations wherever we operate.
Additionally, we have Environment Supervisors at all our manufacturing plants, making sure we’re always implementing our environmental policy. We also deliver training programs to our people at all levels, so they’re fully aware of our policy and actively working towards it. Plus, we set goals, targets and timetables to help monitor, control and optimize our environmental performance.
Our key environmental practices include:
- Adherence to ISO Standard 14001 at key factories, with regular external audits and verifications on agriculture sustainability
- Environmental Impact Assessments on all Netafim products, focused on the effects of water, chemical and power consumption during manufacture and use
- Environmental Risk Assessments on the environmental impacts of our production operations on agriculture sustainability, from conservation and rehabilitation to waste management and pollution prevention
Women’s empowerment
The most effective way to solve poverty is already widely known – the empowerment of women. Women represent almost half of the global agricultural workforce – yet they produce far less food than men.
This needs to change.
To encourage the adoption of new technologies among women growers, we are sharing as much knowledge on agriculture sustainability as we can and we are bringing the power of precision irrigation to them, so they can gain more control over their household’s income and over their own lives.
Read moreBusiness Conduct Policies
Netafim on agriculture sustainability conducts its relations with integrity, responsibility, honesty, reliability and decency, while obeying local laws and following the rules of proper business behavior. This commitment applies to each and every one of the company’s employees and directors. We are all expected to maintain honest and moral behavior in our work practices by adhering to the Code in all our activities, whether internally with our colleagues, or externally with customers on agriculture sustainability, suppliers, partners, shareholders and all other Netafim stakeholders.
Netafim strives to ensure that we all constantly adhere to the following principles as specified in the Code.
Read Netafim's codeWater-use efficiency
Water scarcity has been the single biggest challenge for farmers around the world. From drought and drainage to lack of access to water reserves. Precision irrigation solves that problem by changing the way you use water – delivering higher and better yields than you’ve ever seen, with less.
Read more
Innovation by farmers, for farmers
The next 50 years of farming won’t be like the last 50. The agricultural sustainability system that served us until now needs to change. Growers need more control. We're farmers and innovators committed to bringing innovation to the marketplace, evolving together with our customers on sustainable agriculture.
Social responsibility
We began as a group of farmers in the Negev desert, tackling an unpredictable climate and a volatile market. Precision irrigation made us realize the huge potential of empowered communities.
By actively seeking out partnerships with stakeholders, we can share and promote our public policy of sound environmental management. And by founding the Netafim Academy on agriculture sustainability, we can now reach out to existing and potential clients, helping them become more efficient and productive food producers.
Even in the harshest conditions and most challenging locations, we’ll strive to help communities of all sizes to prosper and flourish.