One of the next big things in agricultural technology is monitoring the quantity and quality of irrigation runoff water, and complying with the inevitable and evolving regulations.
You ask for examples of ag-tech markets, so here’s a critical one that will only get deeper and wider.
Here’s why: The state is aggressively developing sources of “new water.” Recycling is a major source. Ag runoff water is a major recycling project in the making.
So says Dr. Thomas Harter, one of the planet’s leading groundwater-quality experts and UC Davis Watershed Sciences Institute researcher, as part of his recent briefing to the state Board of Food and Agriculture on issues relating to ag water management.
Thomas helps define the ag-tech leading edge. Listen up.
He began wide, calling the San Joaquin Valley groundwater aquifers “the state’s largest reservoir.” Harter, the lead author of a landmark nitrates (fertilizer contamination of groundwater) study, said his newest research is focusing on the Tule River Basin recharge capacity, including ag return water.
When California Department of Food and Agriculture Secretary Karen Ross asked him if his research group could accurately make ag return water calculations, he said (somewhat surprisingly) yes: using estimated crop consumptive use, evapotranspiration rates, application rates and assuming groundwater is used when surface water is unavailable.
For those of you who are now about to re-read that paragraph, yes, it is important, especially the part about evapotranspiration rates, because it tells us the research material is precise and extensive and could lead to a product design.
Two key regulatory issues, he said, are finding the bottom threshold of a basin, after which restoration must begin, and funding the work. He suggested a replenishment fee for groundwater withdrawals below the threshold.
This means there is money to be made by farmers. So an ag-tech product that calculates runoff, determines quality and tracks the replenish rate could be a winner.
For recharge, the key will be the water right. “Who owns it? If it’s recharged uphill, how is compensation set? How do you capture surface water for recharge? How is it applied and where?” Harter said.
At this point Ross interjected, suggesting ag landowners receive credit for setting aside land for flood recharge. Board member Don Cameron, a grower who has been recognized for field recharge, said that farmers should get in-lieu credit when they use flood water instead of pumping.
Several irrigation districts and others have asked the State Water Resources Control Board (SWRCB) to attach a right to recharge water. And in addition to a powerful regulator impetus for this nascent ag-tech app, the SWRCB in 2016 will determine the quality standards for direct use (drinking and crop irrigation water) of recycling/recharge.
A little cross-marketing hint as we close: The petroleum industry must comply with new groundwater regulation to also monitor the quality and quantity of its runoff. And the industry wants to use its runoff for crop irrigation.
Go to work!
