Kibbutzim Going Green and Making Green
For decades the kibbutz has been synonymous with a communal farming lifestyle. Today however, agriculture on the kibbutz is often being replaced by other industries and socialism is being replaced by a more pragmatic form of egalitarianism.
The kibbutz has had to adapt many times over the years, but most significantly after the inflation of the 1980s left many kibbutzim tottering towards bankruptcy. If these collectives were going to survive, they needed to branch out from agriculture and become more practical in their strategies. These days, kibbutzim are undergoing another change, going green. That is, helping the environment and bringing additional money to their collective communities as well.
For example, Kibbutz Ketura, located in Israel’s Arava desert was not held back by its socialist mindset when German industrial giant Siemens came knocking. Siemens paid $15 million for a 40% stock in Arava Power, a company affiliated with the kibbutz that hopes to start generating solar power later this year. “Tapping the sun’s energy is only natural given our geographical location and the general inclination of the kibbutz’s members for ecological pursuits,” says Yosef I. Abramowitz, the student activist turned green entrepreneur who founded Arava with other kibbutz members. Eliezer Tokman, the CEO of Siemens Israel added that the members of Kibbutz Ketura aren’t the only ones benefiting from this partnership. “[It] works well for both sides. The guys at Arava are the entrepreneurs. They initiate projects and deal with regulation, and we design, build, and maintain the projects.”
While Kibbutz Arava is relatively new to the clean tech and green energy scene, for other kibbutzim their connection to environmental technology is old news. Kibbutz Dalia started making water meters in order to help kibbutz members conserve water on arid land in 1941. Next to the original blacksmith shop where these meters were first made, now exists a factory that produces millions of these meters every year. Worldwide, the company sells about $100 million worth yearly. David Zakai, export manager at Arad Group, the company owned by Kibbutz Dalia that makes the meters, finds nothing surprising about the direction Kibbutz Dalia has taken since its early days. “It just comes as a natural direction for kibbutzniks,” he explained.
While the kibbutz continues to adapt to modern Israeli life, the connection of the movement to the land remains strong.
For more information on the shift taking place in Israel’s kibbutzim, see the Bloomberg Businessweek article available here.
Photo courtesy of david.nikonvscanon on flickr, used under Creative Commons License.
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