Implementation of the Sustainable Groundwater Management Act has led to increased scarcity for some water users. From its Fresno manufacturing facility, Netafim USA is working to help growers make up the difference. Netafim photo

A global company with a major Central Valley presence is celebrating six decades of helping farmers save water and produce bigger yields.

Netafim is an Israeli-based manufacturer of drip irrigation equipment founded in 1965. Netafim USA, founded in 1981, is the company’s American subsidiary and has a manufacturing facility in Fresno.

Naty Barak is the chief sustainability officer at Netafim and has been with the company since 1975.

Barak is originally from Israel, and lived on a kibbutz at the age of 20, where he got his first interaction with the agriculture industry growing cotton, sugar beets, potatoes and peppers.

About 60 years ago, Barak and a group of 100 men and women, fellow kibbutz members, had a vision to produce an innovative irrigation system that used as little water as possible to grow more and better yields into a thriving business.

“We were looking to solve our challenges and grow whatever we could at that time with the amount of water that we had. We realized that in that arid area we cannot survive just with farming, so we were looking for an industry,” he said.

There is always a challenge when working with farmers, but it’s always rewarding, he said.

“We are all over the world and we are doing well while doing good things for the planet, for people, for farmers and for the environment,” Barak said.

Barak said they are farmers working with farmers and know how to talk to them, which helps the company make better products.

Barak said that in the 1980s, farmers cared more about yields than conserving water, but with the rise in droughts, specifically in California, water sparsity became more of an issue. There has been rising demand for their products in recent years.

The company has 19 manufacturing plants worldwide, and tries to locally source their materials using channels that have lower tariffs, but it is a challenge.

From the small farming community in Israel founded over 60 years ago to the international company it has grown into today, Netafim is the largest irrigation company in the world with a presence in 110 countries and several subsidiaries.

However, he said sometimes he still feels frustrated that 70% of the irrigation globally is still done through flooding. California uses drip irrigation for about 50% of its irrigation needs.

“We still have a lot of work ahead of us to help farmers all over the world,” Barak said.