When asked what top three words came to mind when thinking about sustainability, respondents to The Packer’s 2025 Sustainability Insights Survey overwhelmingly responded with “water.”
Every year, The Packer conducts three Sustainability Insights surveys — one each for produce growers, retailers and consumers — on their perceptions and opinions related to sustainability in fresh produce. In this year’s survey, 74 fresh produce growers representing 29 states responded. Though the response rate means the results are not necessarily widely applicable to growers across the country, they represent a good snapshot.
Generally speaking, water-related concerns were very important to produce growers when it comes to sustainability.
One respondent from California defined it as “taking care of our resources so as to not waste them or use them up without renewing.” A Virginia-based respondent defined it as a “long-term business plan that addresses local scarcities of energy, labor, water or other inputs.”
Growers consistently ranked water among the top three issues depending on context. Precision irrigation is high on the list of sustainability investments growers are making, and the focus on water issues in the sustainability conversation seems to be increasing. Unfortunately, so too is uncertainty over the availability of water in the future.
Prioritizing Water in Sustainability
When asked to rank the importance of various sustainability practices for their impact, grower respondents overwhelmingly crowned water management efforts as the most important.
All told, 73 of the 74 total respondents listed water use management practices as being important, very important or extremely important for their impact on the sustainability of their operation. No respondent said it wasn’t important, and almost a third of respondents (31%) ranked it extremely important, which far outstripped the next most important category of biological inputs at 19%.
There have been some wording changes in survey questions between 2024 and 2025. This year was the first year that “water use management practices” was offered as an option in questions about sustainability impacts. In 2024’s survey, where there was no specific option for water practices in the comparable question, the top-ranked sustainability practice was “precision ag practices.” The same option was also available in 2025’s question, but only 18% of respondents listed it as “extremely important,” ranking it third in importance in 2025.
This suggests precision water use practices have been and continue to be top of mind for sustainability impact for growers for a while.
Unsurprisingly, those in the arid West ranked water use management practices as having a big impact on their operations’ sustainability. All 18 of the survey’s respondents from California ranked the option as either extremely important or very important (nine each), for example. Similarly, four out of the five respondents from Montana ranked it as extremely important, and both of the Texas respondents ranked it very important.
Precision Irrigation and Water Uncertainty
When it comes to putting those water sustainable priorities into action, over half of the survey’s respondents (51%) reported having implemented some form of water management improvements in their operation. It was the second-most common sustainability practice reported after soil testing (65%) and tied with crop rotation.
When asked about specific tech investments, 38% of respondents reported using precision irrigation tools on their operation. This was the single-most common tech investment reported.
This need for precision irrigation tools will likely increase as respondents overwhelming reported turning to precision irrigation to address water availability worries. While overall respondent concern about water availability fell — with 29% reporting being very or extremely concerned in 2025 compared to 49% last year — grower uncertainty about when negative impacts of lack of water will hit their operation jumped from 25% in 2024 to 39% in 2025.
However, when asked how well irrigation service providers are meeting their needs for sustainable agricultural supplies, a whopping 49% of respondents said providers were only somewhat meeting their needs. Only a quarter of respondents said irrigation service providers were completely meeting their needs. This suggests there is considerable room for improvement among companies supplying precision irrigation tools for produce growers.
