Out of the Bubble
The cowboy from the valley who developed a drone to monitor his herds
Speaking as part of CTech’s Out of the Bubble series, BeeFree Agro cowboy-turned-CEO Noam Azran discusses the benefits and challenges of operating in Israel’s periphery
13:5607.02.22
The north of Israel has many benefits, not just space and views of pleasant greenery swapped out instead of city highways. For companies like BeeFree Agro, which provides farmers with a technological system to help move cattle and monitor the quality of pastures, being in the north is imperative to its business and the benefits far outweigh the drawbacks.
“In Israel, most of the cattle and livestock is grown in the north - it’s where we have better pastures and more open range,” explained BeeFree Agro’s CEO, Noam Azran. “I started out as a cowboy, as a farmer, and I spent the last 10 years in this area running and working on ranges in the north. This is where I grew up as a professional in this field. And the solution we are creating now we initially developed for ourselves as farmers.”
For companies that are determined to remain outside the city centers, the grass isn’t always greener. “There are pluses and minuses to everything,” he continued. “I can tell you running a company here we find it a bit harder to find high-quality programmers and engineers. But so far we have been doing it. It's a bit harder, but we need to be up here in the north - our test sites, our cattle farms are in the Galilee and Golan Heights, it is crucial for us to be next to the farmers, next to the fields, so we can run our tests and be close to our customers.”
You can watch the entire exchange in the video above.
