First, you can find many alliances and cooperation between competitors.

Second, from a personal perspective, those changes made us work harder in order to survive and develop unique and focused breeding programs. We understood that we had to be close to the market and create a good networking in the agricultural community as well as in the fresh produce industry. We developed strong links with all the institutes and I am proud to say that our company helped direct their research efforts and Israel, small as it is, became a center of innovation.

The result of globalization was that global companies could not afford to not be present in this market. Some are already here and the rest will follow. The last few years have been full of changes. Seminis and Syngenta have changed distributors, Seminis, Limagrain and De Ruiter invested in Israeli companies and Aventis (recently bought by Bayer) is invested in R&D here and has just opened a subsidiary here. Incotec also has a subsidiary here but it is a representation office, not an operational site.