A water treatment facility at Shafdan Wastewater Treatment Plant Photo: Song Shengxia/GT

A glance at a map of Israel reveals a country more than half of which is covered by the Negev Desert. But at the top of any good Israeli map there is the country's traditional expression: "Israel, a land flowing with milk and honey."

Given its relative lack of natural resources, Israel has made efforts to transform parts of the parched desert area into fertile land, so that plants and crops can be grown.

Since the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948, agricultural output has increased twelvefold, while agricultural water use has only increased threefold, according to Israel's Ministry of Agriculture & Rural Development.

There are around 300 agricultural companies in Israel, 200 of which are exporters.

The revenue from agro-technology is $4 billion, according to data from the Israel Export & International Cooperation Institute (IEICI).

The challenges that Israel has had to face while striving to achieve food supply independence are extreme.

The lack of land and water resources and high labor costs have resulted in reliance on technology, said Ofer Sachs, CEO of IEICI.

Wastewater treatment and drip irrigation technology have played a significant role in making Israel's agricultural achievements possible.

"About 91 percent of the country's sewage is treated and 75 percent of treated waste water gets back to agriculture use," said Gilad Peled, director of the Water, Cleantech & Agro-Technology Department at IEICI.

Wastewater undergoes extensive treatment before it is used for irrigation of edible crops.

Shafdan Wastewater Treatment Plant, the biggest water recycling plant in the Middle East and one of the largest in the world, treats all the wastewater from the Dan region, the most densely populated area of Israel.

What is unique about Israel's wastewater treatment technology is that after tertiary treatment, water is implanted into sand dunes, which serve as the best and most natural filter.

For about 400 days, the water percolates through sand layers and sifts into an aquifer. At the end of the stage, the water can be used for irrigation.

"The wastewater is purified to a level as good as tap water," said Meir Ben-Noon, the main guide at Shafdan's visitors' center.

Shafdan now provides 70 percent of the irrigation water in the Negev Desert areas.

Israel's wastewater treatment technologies have been exported to other countries and regions, including Singapore and China, according to Ben-Noon.

Dripping down

Netafim is an Israeli company known for commercializing drip irrigation technologies invented by Israeli hydraulic engineer Simcha Blass in the 1930s.

It is now the largest drip irrigation systems supplier in the world.

Drip irrigation is a means of delivering water and nutrients in precise amounts directly to the plant's root zone through surface or subsurface drip lines, drop by drop.

The drip system can be controlled by computers or even smartphones. Sensors implanted in the soil for the entire duration of the crop are used to regularly monitor the conditions of the soil, the irrigation water and the crop itself.

This enables farmers to decide how much water and nutrients should be applied, said Yoav Zeif, head of product offering and marketing at Netafim.

Compared with traditional overhead irrigation - through which water can be wasted through evaporation and surface runoff - drip irrigation saves water. It also cuts labor and improves yields.

Thirsty for help

Cooperation between China and Israel has been on the rise in recent years, both in the private sector and at the government level.

When Jinsui Agriculture Group (JAG) in Long'an county, South China's Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region sought to upgrade its aging irrigation equipment in 2009, the company turned to Netafim.

Long'an county is an area that traditionally suffers from drought in the first half of the year.

The company originally tested Netafim's drip irrigation system in 46 hectares of its banana plantation.

It proved to be a success. The drip irrigation system not only saved water and fertilizer by between 50 and 60 percent - it also improved yields.

The company began to expand the use of drip irrigation systems in the rest of its farmland, and now all of its 2,400 hectares of banana plantations use the system.

Since 2009, the company has developed into the largest banana grower in Asia, with total assets of 500 million yuan ($80 million).

"Drip irrigation transformed our thinking about modern agriculture. Without using drip irrigation, we could not have become the largest banana grower so quickly," said Lu Rongkai, deputy general manager of JAG.

With traditional flood irrigation, it takes three workers three days to irrigate roughly 167 hectares of banana plantation, said Li Baoshen, deputy director of the banana engineering department at JAG.

Now, it can be done in one day, and the yield can be increased by up to 52 million yuan per hectare, Li noted.

In November, Israel's Minister of the Economy Naftali Bennett announced the launch of a "Water City" project in Shouguang in East China's Shandong Province.

Under the project, Shouguang will have access to Israel's advanced technologies in fields such as desalination, wastewater treatment and irrigation.

"There is already fruitful cooperation between the two countries. We believe this cooperation should and could deepen. Israel has technologies that are relevant for China in the fields of irrigation, water management, greenhouses, seeds, dairy, poultry and more," Sachs said.

Huge potential

"Israel and China have some similarities in terms of having a limited area of arable land and natural resources. The application of high technology could boost China's development of its agriculture," said Qiao Lü, COO of Beijing Shounong Livestock Development Co.

Early this month, China pledged in its No.1 Central Document to speed up agricultural modernization through reforms and innovation in 2015 and consolidate the position of agriculture as the foundation of the economy.

In a landmark reform in 2013, China allowed collectively owned land to be transferred, rented or pooled. This allowed farmers to legally transfer land use rights to large-scale farming companies or even turn the rights into shares in these companies.

With Israel's advanced agricultural technology and increased large-scale farming in China, the potential for cooperation between the two nations will be huge, said Ma Wenfeng, an analyst with Beijing Orient Agribusiness Consultant Co.

Israeli water saving and irrigation solutions could contribute to China's development of its arid western areas, and farmers could use advanced technologies to increase yields and reduce labor costs, Ma noted.