The Milken Innovation Center hosted a Financial Innovations Lab addressing how to accelerate the growth of agritech in Israel and Californiain. This Lab hosted Karen Ross, Secretary of California Department of Food and Agriculture, and leadership from California’s Department of Water Resources and the State’s Water Resources Control Board, as well as agriculture industry leaders from agricultural and agritech sectors, including the strawberry and almond growers.
Israel has led the world in the development of technology solutions in its agriculture sector. The development of precision irrigation, new seed technologies, and the integration of information technology and smart systems in agriculture have led to Israel become one of the world leaders in agricultural productivity and a leading exporter of technology solutions that feed the world.
This Lab also convened leaders in academia, industry, and finance to design policies and programs to accelerate “climate-smart agriculture” solutions, tech transfer, and collaboration between Israel, California and the developing world. Our objective in the Lab was to build market-driven, sustainable and scalable models in agritech and food. Among the topics that were discussed: low water/climate smart ag, precision agriculture with data-driven analytics, Internet of Things (IoT) and big data, and post-harvest and food science.