Israeli greenhouse and irrigation solutions provider Netafim has recently achieved good results with the introduction of their Crop Management Technology program at an existing greenhouse operation on the tropical Island of Papua New Guinea in the South-Western Pacific.
Shmulik Hadar, a Netafim customer and greenhouse grower on Papua New Guinea.
The greenhouse grower had been growing on 5 hectares for a few years. "Having established a new 5-hectare greenhouse farm with an additional hectare of trestle-grown crops to grow cucumber, tomatoes, lettuce and peppers, our customer was getting yields that were below expectation and below a sustainable financial threshold. After three years of trying to improve both quality and yield, our customer was desperate", Netafim writes on their blog.
Netafim and their experienced agronomists, who are very familiar with growing different crops in tropical climates, took on the challenge to help the grower to improve the crop and his production. "Upon seeing the state of the greenhouse crops, we immediately pressed the reset button: we installed our Crop Management Technology (CMT) for full automation, reset the irrigation patterns, revised Nutrigation™ protocols, trained the local staff, established measuring stations to track water drainage and got the system up and running to standards that our customer hadn’t believed possible – all within a few short months."
Efraim Kaufman, Netafim agronomist, who visited Papua New Guinea four times in the last 12 months, said: “The customer asked us to help significantly increase his tomato yield, which was extremely short of target. After our work, our customer was producing a much higher yield of several tons of tomatoes per week, they had reduced their water use to less than half and drastically reduced the cost of fertilizer. It was a revolution for them.”
According to Netafim, this kind of transformation is not only about agriculture. "It’s a benefit to the entire community. Vegetable prices in Papua New Guinea are high as most crops are imported due to the challenges of local growing. By helping our customer grow more with less, we help increase access to affordable food and improve the quality of life. That’s sustainable agriculture and that’s our mission."
For more information on Netafim's solutions, please see: www.netafim.com