OK techies, here’s a challenge for you:
Deliver huge quantities of the world’s most precious commodity to diverse clients real-time and on-demand.
But wait, there’s more:
The delivery system must be upgraded to the existing system, designed anywhere from 50 to 150 years ago and contains patchwork improvements, and linked to other systems of varying sophistication and capabilities.
And more:
Technology currently consists of "ditch tenders" driving around in dusty pickups, manually opening and closing valves, and lifting ancient wooden spillway gates. But they do communicate by cell phones.
Water, of course, is the most precious commodity. California’s planet-leading agribusinesses use somewhere around three-quarters of the supply.
Farmers may be covered in dirt and wear unfashionable clothes, but they are fierce competitors and good stewards. They know their businesses – as a Canadian wheat grower once told me: "If it doesn’t pencil out, I don’t do it."
Precision irrigation pencils out. For the past decade, California growers, particularly those with high-value permanent crops (trees and vines) have made significant investments in sustainable water management – installing drip irrigation lines and emitters, connecting the micro-valves to soil probes and stem stem sensors, and running to whole show from their smartphones.
Cool, huh? You had no idea, right?
The problem is is that the delivery system is so last century, actually last, last century. High-tech water delivery is a lined ditch with remotely operated valves. Growers still have "water days" – when they will get water whether their plants need it or not.
Karen Ross, secretary of the California Department of Food & Agriculture, told a state Senate budget subcommittee last week there is a need for on-demand water deliveries to really manage drought response and water conservation.
More than half of California’s nearly 10 million acres of irrigated lands are now on some type of drip irrigation, she told the legislators. And the tally increases weekly – now spurred by the drought.
Felicia Marcus, chair of the State Water Resources Control Board, echoed the department’s sentiment last week at a workshop where she said on-demand deliveries were essential.
OK, techies – the task is mission-critical and the regulators are aligned.
Find a good water engineer buddy and figure out how to push and pull liquid gold to where it’s needed, when it’s needed and on the demand of a vast network of sensors and valves.
And tell your children not to grow up to be ditch tenders.
If you’re serious, I can connect you to irrigation visionaries.
