Water Conservation

The Hidden Risk: Why Water Quality Is the Next Big Challenge for Specialty Crops

Mon, 04 May 2026 20:12:48 GMT

In the world of specialty crops, the conversation around water has long been dominated by the urgent need for volume, with many farmers wondering if they will have enough supply to simply get through the season. However, Kilimo CEO Jairo Trad points to a more insidious threat mounting in the global supply chain. While drought remains a visible crisis, water quality — specifically the degradation caused by overfertilization and runoff — is emerging as a significant risk that many producers have yet to fully quantify.

Founded in Córdoba, Argentina, in 2014, Kilimo was born from Trad’s observations of how weather volatility could decide the fate of a family farm. Today, the climate-tech company uses artificial intelligence and machine learning to analyze satellite imagery and meteorological data, helping farmers across seven countries, including U.S. and Chile, reduce water use by up to 30%. As the company expands its footprint in high-stakes regions like California’s San Joaquin Valley, the focus is shifting toward a more holistic view of water stewardship.

The Quality Blind Spot

For high-value crops like almonds, berries and citrus, the chemistry of the water is just as vital as the volume. Poor water quality doesn’t just impact immediate yields; it creates a compounding cycle of soil degradation and increased costs. Trad notes that this is particularly dangerous in specialty crop regions where production is concentrated. When water courses become polluted, the farming activity itself begins to worsen the very conditions required for future harvests.

“Water pollution and overfertilization lead to significant problems for farmers down the line,” Trad says. “In specialty crops, there is not enough data and not enough conversation around the water quality that farmers are using and how the same farming activity keeps worsening those water conditions.”

This creates a feedback loop that threatens the sustainability of the land in the most literal sense: the ability to sustain production over the long term. If the water quality isn’t high enough for the crops, the entire economic model of the farm begins to crumble, Trad says.

Data as the New Inheritance

Kilimo is tackling this vulnerability by moving beyond simple irrigation schedules. Its platform acts as a bridge between traditional agricultural wisdom and modern climate demands. By layering water balance modeling and local climate data, it can show growers in real time the exact difference between what a crop demands and what is actually being applied.

This data-first approach does more than just save acre-feet; it reduces the need for excess pumping and helps mitigate the overapplication of fertilizers that leads to water pollution. For Trad, this technology is a way to protect the “grandfather’s wisdom” that has guided farms for decades.

“Data can become a new kind of inheritance — a tool that doesn’t replace wisdom but helps it weather a changing climate,” Trad says. “Agriculture isn’t merely the sector most exposed to water risk; it’s our strongest partner for rebuilding the commons.”

Rewarding Stewardship Through Water Credits

To bridge the financial gap, Kilimo has pioneered a first-of-its-kind water-credit marketplace. In this model, verified water savings are treated similarly to carbon credits. Global companies like Microsoft, Google and Coca-Cola — seeking to meet water-positive pledges — invest in these credits, effectively paying farmers for the water they conserve.

This mechanism ensures that the cost of protecting water quality and quantity isn’t shouldered by the farmer alone. It transforms water conservation from a regulatory burden into a verifiable asset. As Trad puts it: “Water for agriculture is essentially free … so [farmers] have very little reason to be mindful of water beyond their own ideas that they should conserve it. The challenge is to give value to water.”

A Shared Future

As climate pressures mount, the industry must recognize that specialty crops are essentially “solar panels that function on water.” If the water fueling them is compromised, either by scarcity or by pollution, the entire system fails. By prioritizing water data today, specialty crop growers can transform a hidden risk into a verified competitive advantage.

The goal is to build a system where the health of the resources is as measurable as the harvest itself. In Trad’s view, this is the only way forward.

“Technology helps, but it doesn’t lead,” Trad says. “Farmers lead. We bring the tools; they bring the wisdom. That’s the only way this works.”

EPA Opens Public Comment Period On Draft Fungicide Strategy

Mon, 04 May 2026 22:17:01 GMT

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is offering the U.S. public an opportunity to help shape the future of agricultural safety, unveiling a draft Fungicide Strategy designed to balance the needs of American farmers with the protection of the nation’s most vulnerable wildlife.

The proposal marks a significant step in the agency’s effort to meet its dual mandates under the Endangered Species Act (ESA) and the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act (FIFRA). By creating a more efficient and transparent framework for pesticide registration, the EPA says it aims to “safeguard more than 1,000 federally endangered and threatened species” while ensuring growers maintain the tools necessary to protect the nation’s food supply.

A New Framework for Modern Farming

The draft strategy focuses on conventional agricultural fungicides across the lower 48 states — an area covering approximately 41 million treated acres annually. Rather than a one-size-fits-all mandate, the proposal introduces a three-step framework:

Identify Impacts: Assessing potential population-level effects on listed species.
Mitigation Planning: Pinpointing specific measures to reduce those risks.
Targeted Application: Determining exactly where these protections are most needed based on where endangered and threatened species live and how fungicides move through the environment.

The agency emphasizes that while this strategy guides future regulatory actions, it does not impose immediate requirements. Instead, the strategy serves as a roadmap for upcoming registration reviews, with the EPA promising public input on every specific action before it is finalized.

Balancing Innovation and Conservation

Saying that it recognizes farmers are the backbone of the U.S. economy, the EPA’s draft includes several updates to provide greater flexibility. Notably, the plan expands options for reducing spray drift buffer distances and introduces new mitigation tools, such as the use of “guar gum” as a spray adjuvant.

"[American farmers] need a diverse toolbox of innovative agricultural technologies to manage crop disease, prevent resistance, and produce the affordable, nutritious food that feeds our country,” the EPA says, in a press release. “The draft Fungicide Strategy is designed to ensure those innovative tools remain available and that they are used in ways that protect the environment and endangered species.

How to Get Involved

In a push for transparency, the EPA has opened a 60-day public comment period to gather feedback from scientists, conservationists, Tribal partners and the agricultural community.

Public Comment: Stakeholders can review the strategy and submit formal feedback via (Docket: EPA-HQ-OPP-2026-2973) through June 29, 2026.
Informational Webinar: The agency will host a public webinar on May 20, 2026, at 2 p.m. ET to walk through the proposal and answer questions. Register here .

The EPA expects to review all public input and finalize the Fungicide Strategy by November 2026.

Water Issues Headlined 2025 and Will Likely Stay There in 2026

Fri, 19 Dec 2025 19:29:39 GMT

The year 2025 saw several big water issues hit the news, both nationally and in some of the biggest produce-growing states. Many of these stories will continue into 2026’s headlines.

For example, EPA and the Army Corps of Engineers set a water milestone late in the year when they finally released their long-awaited updated definition of Waters of the U.S. with implementation expected in February or March of 2026.

The announcement was made Nov. 17, and the proposed rule was released Nov. 20. This update was spawned by the 2023 Supreme Court’s Sackett decision, and — according to the EPA — will bring the definition in line with that ruling .

The release followed numerous listening sessions seeking input from states, industry, agriculture and other stakeholders. A resounding theme was the need to maintain state’s rights on the one hand and streamline the WOTUS determination process so landowners can easily determine if something on their operation counts as a jurisdictional water.

The proposed rule is up for public comment through Jan. 5, 2026.

The five-year water cycle ended, but the story continues for Texas

Late October 2025 saw the end of the most recent five-year water delivery cycle from Mexico to Texas according to the 1944 treaty. As expected, Mexico did not deliver the 1.75 million acre-feet it is required to within that five-year span, only sending just over 50% of that.

However, it did deliver more than a year’s worth of water (350,000 acre-feet) between late April and Oct. 24. That is good in the short-term, but Texas water and produce experts warn that the pattern of late or non-existent Mexican water deliveries is not sustainable for the state. They worry more crops, including the Texas citrus industry, will go the way of its sugar industry .

A common refrain from Texans is that Mexico is not keeping up it’s end of the bargain, having instead built up its permanent agriculture in arid Chihuahua and capturing water that should flow to Texas for those water-hungry crops. Experts have pushed for some ability to enforce the 1944 treaty, potentially through the upcoming U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement renegotiations .

But the story is and will continue into 2026. Early in December, President Donald Trump demanded Mexico deliver 200,000 acre-feet of water on its debt by Dec. 31. Mexico’s president called that impossible but said Mexico and the U.S. are working on an agreement for the future to pay down the water debt.

California’s water woes and their impact grow

The economic value of water to California’s produce drew the limelight early on in 2025. In April, California Governor Gavin Newsom announced the Golden State had become the fourth-largest economy in the world . But that rank is tenuous and could be threatened if the state does not take action to ensure its water future.

Up to 3 million acres of farmland, 67,000 ag jobs and $39.5 billion from the economy could be lost if the state doesn’t invest in water storage and other strategies, according to a University of California, Davis study . All of this played out on a backdrop of ongoing, many say man-made , drought and disappointing water allocations even when there is water available.

As the year came to a close, California’s largest irrigation district released its economic impact review report, which found that water restrictions had wide-reaching negative impacts on the state and its people. In short, when water is cut, the production of fresh fruits and vegetables declines, more acres are fallowed, jobs and economic benefits are lost and more.

As the new year kicks off, the 2026 irrigation allocations will start to trickle in, so growers in the Golden State will know how to plan for their coming crops.

New WOTUS Proposal Could Reduce Red Tape for Farmers and Ranchers

Mon, 17 Nov 2025 18:01:44 GMT

Farmers and ranchers could soon face fewer regulatory hurdles when working near waterways, as EPA and the Army Corps of Engineers released a new proposal on Nov. 17 to redefine “Waters of the United States” (WOTUS). The agencies say the proposed rule is designed to bring long-requested clarity to what features fall under federal jurisdiction potentially reducing permitting uncertainty for agriculture, landowners and rural businesses.

The proposed rule can be found on the Federal Register . The public can submit comments online there or via Regulations.gov on or before Jan. 5, 2026. During the announcement event on Nov. 17, EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin urged the public to submit comments.

The definition of WOTUS determines when producers must secure permits for projects that could affect surface water quality, including common activities such as building terraces, installing drainage or expanding livestock operations. EPA officials say the new proposal aims to align fully with the Supreme Court’s Sackett decision and prevent farmers from needing lawyers or consultants simply to determine whether a water feature on their land is federally regulated.

The proposal follows Zeldin’s promise in March to launch the biggest deregulatory action in history and a series of listening sessions in April and May that asked states, tribes, industry and agriculture to weigh in on WOTUS needs.

Clearer Definition After Years of Confusion

Zeldin and Assistant Secretary of the Army for Civil Works Adam Telle emphasize the rule is designed to be clear, durable and commonsense.

Key elements include:

Defined terms such as relatively permanent, continuous surface connection, and tributary to outline which waters qualify under the Clean Water Act.
A requirement that jurisdictional tributaries must have predictable, consistent flow to traditional navigable waters.
Wetlands protections are limited to wetlands that physically touch and are indistinguishable from regulated waters for a consistent duration each year.
Reaffirmed exclusions important to agriculture, including prior converted cropland, certain ditches and waste treatment systems.
A new exclusion for groundwater.
Locally-familiar terminology, such as “wet season,” to help determine whether water features meet regulatory thresholds.

EPA says these changes are intended to reduce uncertainty that has stemmed from years of shifting definitions across administrations.

Impact of WOTUS Proposal on Agriculture

For producers, the proposal could simplify compliance by narrowing which water features fall under federal oversight and confirming exclusions that many farm groups have long advocated.

Zeldin says the aim is “protecting the nation’s navigable waters from pollution” while preventing unnecessary burdens on farmers and ranchers. He criticizes past Democratic administrations for broad interpretations that, in his view, extended federal reach to features that did not warrant regulation.

Farm groups have argued for years that unclear or overly broad definitions can lead to significant costs, delays and legal risks when planning conservation work, drainage projects or infrastructure improvements. A more consistent rule could reduce project backlogs and limit case-by-case determinations that often slow progress during planting, construction or livestock expansion.

“We’ve seen WOTUS definitions, guidance and legal arguments change with each administration,” said Garrett Hawkins, president of the Missouri Farm Bureau, during the May 1 EPA listening session for agriculture . He adds: “farmers, land owners and small businesses are the ones who suffer the most when we don’t have clear rules.”

Several of those who gave testimony and public comment during the ag listening session argued that farmers and ranchers, who already struggle with unpredictable markets and tight margins, shouldn’t have to hire experts to identify elements of their own land.

“A practical WOTUS definition will allow the average landowner — not an engineer, not an attorney, not a wetland specialist — to walk out on their property, see a water feature and make, at minimum, a preliminary determination about whether a feature is federally jurisdictional,” says Kim Brackett, vice president of the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association, who also gave testimony in May.

Alignment With the Sackett Decision

After the Supreme Court’s 2023 Sackett v. EPA ruling , which restricted federal authority over many wetlands, the agencies say the previous WOTUS definition no longer aligned with the law. EPA already issued a memo earlier this year clarifying limits on jurisdiction over adjacent wetlands. The newly proposed rule is the next step in that process.

The proposed rule focuses on relatively permanent bodies of water — streams, rivers, lakes and oceans — and wetlands that are physically connected to those waters. Seasonal and regional variations are incorporated, including waters that flow consistently during the wetter months.

The current situation is a regulatory patchwork. Due to litigation that followed the January 2023 WOTUS rule, which was considered in the Sackett decision, different states are following different rules. Currently, 24 states, mostly the coastal and Great Lakes states, are operating on the 2023 rule, while the other 26 states, mostly those in center and in the Southeast, are operating on pre-2015 WOTUS rule.

Oversight Rests With State and Tribes

A major theme of the proposal is cooperative federalism, giving more authority to states and tribes to manage local land and water resources. EPA says the rule preserves necessary federal protections while recognizing states and tribal governments are best positioned to oversee many smaller or isolated water features.

Sections 101b and 510 of the CWA are key structural examples of the concept of cooperative federalism. The sections give states and tribes the right to set standards and issue permits for federal activities that could discharge pollutants into a water of the U.S. within the state or territory. The most common example of this are 404 dredge and fill permits.

This focus on cooperative federalism was the main chorus of the EPA’s listening session for states , held April 29, especially as it concerns wetlands.

“If more wetlands are excluded from WOTUS, then certain federal projects would not require a section 401 water quality certification by the states,” noted Jennifer Congdon, director of federal affairs for New York Department of Environmental Conservation, during the states’ listening session. She argues that such a situation could impair water quality within a state, thus violating states’ rights under the CWA.

What Happens Next

The proposed rule is available online for public comment on the Federal Register and Regulations.gov on or before Jan. 5, 2026. EPA and the Army Corps of Engineers will hold two hybrid public meetings, and details for submitting comments or registering to speak will be available on EPA’s website .

After the comment period, the agencies plan to move quickly toward a final rule.

“Once the rule is finalized, it typically takes effect 60 days after publication in the Federal Register pursuant to Congressional Review Act requirements,” the EPA press office told The Packer earlier this summer .

Based on these potential timelines, a new — potentially final — WOTUS rule could take effect as early as early March.

Dole Earns Sustainability Award for Watershed Work

Wed, 08 Oct 2025 20:38:28 GMT

Dole plc announced Oct. 6 it has been named a winner of the Sustainability in the Food Industry Award by The Shelby and Griffin Report. The award recognizes organizations that drive innovation and measurable impact in reducing environmental footprints, support communities and shape a more sustainable food industry.

The award was for Dole’s Watershed Management Project in the Uchapa-Pimienta and Andaluz Stream microwatershed of Olanchito, Yoro, Honduras. Implemented from March 2023 through February 2025 in partnership with the Zamorano Pan-American Agricultural School, the project integrated environmental education, ecosystem-based water management and sustainable production systems to reduce climate vulnerability and strengthen the resilience of local communities, according to the company.

“The Watershed Management Project in Honduras exemplifies how we combine science-based approaches, local partnerships and community engagement to protect natural resources, promote sustainable farming and deliver long-term value for people and the planet,” says Rudy Amador, vice president of corporate responsibility, sustainability and communication for Dole Tropical Products Latin America.

“Receiving this award underscores Dole’s commitment to building resilience and opportunity and further reinforces our mission to reduce environmental impact, support communities and lead the food industry toward a greener future,” he adds.

The project was implemented using a participatory, multistakeholder governance model. By engaging local authorities, community groups, indigenous leaders, youth, NGOs, academia and the private sector, Dole says it fostered collaborative watershed management. Some of the initiative’s efforts included:

Engaged 551 local high school students and 45 children in education and environmental protection, restoring 480 square meters of a municipal nursery with the capacity to produce 50,000 plants annually
Created school gardens for 103 children and youth under Zamorano’s “Learning by Doing” methodology
Secured the official declaration of 569 hectares of the Quebrada Andaluz micro-basin as a protected Forest Zone, restoring 29 hectares with native flora species and safeguarding an additional 672 hectares under conservation
Three community fire protection brigades were equipped
Two Forest Protection Plans were implemented to reduce wildfires to less than 5% of the total area
Expanded clean water access by connecting 230 families to improved distribution systems
Promoted sustainable livelihoods by planting 2,000 fruit trees on farmers’ plots, enriching 40 production units through agroforestry systems, supporting two beekeeping organizations of 50 members (17 women and 33 men) and producing 30,000 ornamental, fruit and timber plants

The project helped establish a community-managed Green Fund, approved by the Sabanetas Water Users Assembly, to finance forest protection and watershed monitoring. Funded through a small annual user contribution, it ensures long-term sustainability of conservation efforts.

Automation Takes Valve Flipping Out of Watermelon Farming

Wed, 08 Oct 2025 13:36:54 GMT

Even drip irrigation can be made more efficient with comparatively simple, adaptable irrigation automation technology. So says the finding of a University of Florida assessment into watermelon growers in northern Florida’s Suwannee Valley.

Tyler Pittman, the UF Extension agent who conducted the 2024 assessment, explains that watermelon growers in the area already used drip tape under plastic tarping with manual or diesel pumps. Because watermelons benefit from frequent short waterings , and fertilizer efficiency is heavily impacted by proper irrigation, that means a lot of valve flipping for growers.

But the crop is also transient, maybe growing in the same field only once every seven to 10 years according to Pittman, meaning traditional automated irrigation technology built for permanent or consistent crops are difficult for watermelon growers. Pittman wanted to help change that.

“We started with what looked like analog garden timers on water-operated valves,” he says. “We did that with two farmers on about 80 acres as a proof of concept that we could automate this process and take the valve flipping out of the farming so that they could irrigate differently. From there, Toro organically came into the space with Tempus.”

In the 2024 assessment, four area watermelon growers collectively farming 1,883 acres, using Toro’s Tempus AG controller, reported using 24% less water, or an average of 873 gallons, per day irrigating. That amounted to roughly 164 million gallons, or 503 acre-feet, of water saved over the course of the 100-day watermelon growing season in the region.

“We’re flirting with saving more than 696 million gallons of water each year if the farmers of all 8,000 acres of watermelon in the region adopt this technology,” said Pittman in a UF spotlight on the assessment .

Participants in the assessment also reported spending, on average, 1.7 fewer hours in the field per day. One participant reported eliminating three staff as a result of the automation, saving $36,000 over the course of the 100-day growing period, according to an assessment results document.

About the controller

Adoption of irrigation automation in Suwannee Valley’s watermelon growers grew rapidly between 2022 when Pittman conducted his initial proof-of-concept trial on 80 acres to 2024 with the larger assessment. Toro’s Tempus systems have been popular among growers.

“The funny part about [the 2024 assessment] is I was trying to find demo farms for the Toro system, and everybody turned me down,” Pittman says. “Usually, farmers don’t turn down free equipment. But the reason they were turning me down is because they had already purchased it themselves, and that was a testament to the utility of it.”

Tony Tavares, marketing communications manager for Toro, explains the Tempus AG is a controlling automation system developed to be easy to use and install. They are battery powered and use “LoRa” technology that allows for long-range, low-power communication.

This means they “can be installed directly at the valve rather than in a centralized location,” he says. “This makes it very easy to re-deploy the system in different configurations each year as field layouts and irrigation needs change between seasons.”

He adds that the controllers can be operated via Bluetooth by any Android or iOS devices. To use the systems remotely, the controllers need to be in WiFi range or can connect to 4G via base stations provided by Toro.

“I would say probably 90% of the operations here have put in Tempest because it didn’t require the infrastructure and it was simple to install,” says Pittman, adding that the region’s watermelon growers rarely have electricity in the field.

“So having the ability to run something off of 12 volt with solar power that can automate a field, but also be picked up and moved next year to another field, was kind of the big selling point for a lot of our growers,” he adds.

New California Law Focuses on Long-Term Water Planning

Tue, 07 Oct 2025 16:19:06 GMT

A bill with unanimous support is basically a unicorn in today’s divided politics, so California just saw the return of a water-planning unicorn in the form of SB 72 that Gov. Gavin Newsom signed into law Oct. 1 .

Prior to being signed, the bill — effectively an update to the California Water Plan that enforces the need for quantifiable water needs reports and water goals — passed through the state’s legislature without any “no” votes.

This also isn’t the first time it happened. Past iterations of the bill also received unanimous support, but this is the first time the governor signed it.

According to Jason Phillips, CEO of the Friant Water Authority — which supplies water to over a million acres of irrigated farmland in the San Joaquin Valley — the overwhelming and repeated legislative support shows a shift in the understanding of the state’s dire water situation.

“It is an acknowledgment that water conservation is not going to solve the supply deficit both current and projected that we have in this state,” he says.

The bill’s author, state Sen. Anna Caballero , District 14, said in an early September press meeting that the cost of this inaction has been borne mostly by California’s farmers. This is especially true in the San Joaquin Valley, a massive center of the state’s fresh produce production.

She said that the state’s water challenges have resulted in “a scenario where fallowing land has become the norm as a way to make it through the growing season.”

Caballero also characterized that fallowing of farmland as threatening the entire state’s economy — currently the fourth-largest in the world — to the tune of up to $14.5 billion and 67,000 jobs annually .

“It’s all the ripple effect that comes from taking millions of acres out of irrigated lands in California, and we just need to understand that that’s just in one region,” she said.

About the Bill

Caballero said that the California Water Plan “hasn’t seen meaningful revisions in 20 years,” but Phillips characterizes SB 72 as an effort to solve that issue.

“This bill is going to mandate that the California Water Plan do what it was supposed to do and what it used to do, which is identify the water needs of the regions of the state of California, both now and in the future, and put together a plan on how those needs will get met,” he says.

The bill creates a planning framework with deadlines that will require the state to establish long-term water supply targets and strategies to reach them. One of the earliest goals of the bill requires that, by 2028, the California Department of Water Resources creates plans on how it will achieve 9 million acre feet “of additional water, water conservation, or water storage capacity” annually by 2040.

Philips called the efforts necessary to achieve such a goal “no small planning task.”

“This is a very significant task that the state will have to go through to identify how [it’s] going to come up with 9 million acre feet per year statewide and with storage and conservation, recycling and desal,” he says.

California’s Current Crisis

Despite the daunting task, Phillips says there’s no real choice; the state must ensure there is water for farms and people today and into the future. But that goal can’t be achieved through the popular narratives, he adds.

“Water conservation is what people want to go to first when thinking of farmers,” he says. “But agricultural use in the San Joaquin Valley is already about maximized on water conservation.”

Phillips says the only things that will help solve the water challenges in the over 5.5 million acres of productive farmland in the San Joaquin Valley are more surface water to offset the groundwater overdraft or to permanently retire over a million acres of productive farmland. This would be in addition to the farms and farmland already lost.

According to USDA National Agricultural Statistics Service records, there were 24.3 million acres of land in farms in 2020. This compares to 2024 when there were only 23.7 million acres . The number of individual farms also fell from 69,600 operations to 62,500 in that time.

Policy and Planning

“The most unfortunate form of [water] conservation that we have in this state is people leaving and farms leaving,” Phillips says. This exodus of farms from California is not a policy decision but instead the result of inaction and a lack of reporting on current conditions, he adds.

“The governor of the state of California needs to have that presented with that; [farm loss is] a policy decision,” he says. “It needs to be highlighted to policymakers that we either find a way to develop that water or we’re going to lose a substantial amount of productive agriculture.”

That needs to change, and he hopes SB 72’s passage and the reporting requirements it contains will help.

“My engagement is going to be to make sure there is a thoughtful and thorough assessment of the water supply situation that we have today,” he says. “It’s very quantifiable and needs to be quantified.”

Michigan’s Proactive Water Withdrawal Tool Gets Update

Tue, 23 Sep 2025 13:27:05 GMT

Every good tool needs to be proverbially sharpened every now and then. Michigan’s Environment, Great Lakes, and Energy (EGLE) department has done this with the state’s key water tool.

On Sept. 22, the EGLE previewed the state’s updated Water Withdrawal Assessment Tool (WWAT) to the public. Updates to the tool will be available for public use as of Wednesday, Sept. 24.

“Anyone who wants to register a water withdrawal in the state of Michigan has to use the Water Withdrawal Assessment Tool,” explains Lena Pappas, manager of EGLE’s groundwater and geological services section, who spoke to The Packer before the Sept. 22 preview event.

Presenting at the event, Hannah Arnett, a member of EGLE’s water use assessment unit, explained that WWAT is a screening tool that estimates the impact of a proposed water withdrawal on the local streams.

“The WWAT also acts as an accounting system which allows EGLE to track water use and identify cumulative estimate impacts from the registered water use for each watershed,” Arnett added.

About the WWAT

Michigan water use is regulated under a number of agreements. Key among these are the Great Lakes Charter — a 1985 agreement between the U.S. states and Canadian provinces that depend on the Great Lakes’ watersheds — and the Great Lakes Agreement and Compact . In general, these agreements require that water consumption in the Great Lakes’ watersheds must be managed to conserve the “precious public natural resources” that are the water resources of the Great Lakes Basin, as the charter says.

The WWAT was deployed in 2008 as part of Michigan abiding by these various agreements. Anyone in the state who wants to initiate a new or increased large quantity withdrawal — defined as having the capacity to withdraw 100,000 gallons per day or more (i.e. a pump capacity of 70 gallons per minute or more) — has to register with EGLE by using the WWAT before they begin the withdrawal. The tool is way to get these water users a quick assessment on if their proposed withdrawal will negatively impact the watershed.

“The statute actually requires us to have a determination back to people within 10 days and so the tool was an essential part of making that piece work,” Pappas explains.

She adds that the tool and the agreements that helped create it were put in place before the need actually occurred.

“We had the benefit of being able to see some of the issues that had come up in other places,” she says, referencing more arid states like California and Texas, where international and interstate water sharing agreements are older. These older agreements were based on water conditions that no longer exist and have massive impact on the states’ agricultural water use.

“We could watch what was happening in other places and build around anticipated developments,” Pappas adds. “I think we just had the benefit of being further in the line.”

However, the WWAT has not been updated since 2014.

“The original tool was kind of a first-generation pass, and so then as the internet and everything has evolved, we wanted to be able to update it to bring it in line with current technology,” Pappas says.

Updates and Transparency

The updates to the 17-year-old tool aim to bring it up to date with current Michigan security guidelines and increase the transparency between EGLE and the state’s water users. However, not much will change in terms of functionality, Pappas says.

“The tool uses specific stream depletion algorithms, essentially, to estimate what the impact to resources would be,” she says. “That piece is going to stay very much the same.”

The first change users may experience is the need to log in via MiLogin before using the WWAT, as well as user interface updates that provide more options. Most substantial, however, will be the increased transparency, according to EGLE staff involved with the update.

“In addition to a more modern look, this update brings the ability to share state tools with water users,” Arnett says.

Some of the transparency includes the ability to see the current state of various watersheds, other withdrawal registrations in the area, and see increased granularity of data about an area. WWAT users will also be able to input site-specific parameters like transmissivity and storativity “for a more flexible and transparent assessment.”

“These changes have been made in response to recommendations in the 2020 report by the Water Use Advisory Council to share publicly the WWAT data on registrations, their individual impacts, and cumulative impacts,” Arnett explains. “EGLE has also gone a step farther and is sharing aquifer data and hydrological data in the WWAT as well.”

The current update that will be available to the public Sept. 24 is the first of two. The second update release, planned for early next year, will give the public access to two additional depletion estimate systems, one focused on confined aquifers and another focused on layered aquifers.

“The biggest goal is we are trying to be more transparent, showing you guys the data we are using when we are running registrations,” Arnett says.

Updates to the WWAT were tested in the major browsers of Edge, Chrome and Firefox, and the developers say common browser extensions should not hamper the tool’s functionality. They urge users to report any problems they might experience to WaterUseProgram@Michigan.gov .

Fresh Produce Growers Focus on Water for Sustainability

Tue, 16 Sep 2025 14:06:17 GMT

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%.

“Water use management practices” was an option for the first time in the 2025 Sustainability Insights Grower survey and topped the priority list.

(Chart courtesy of Prime46)

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.

Precision irrigation was the single most common sustainability tech investment reported by respondents to The Packer’s 2025 Grower Sustainability Insights survey.

(Graphic courtesy of Prime46)

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.

Sen. Ernst Introduces Bill to Bring WOTUS Certainty

Tue, 29 Jul 2025 19:52:50 GMT

On July 23, Senator Joni Ernst, R-Iowa, introduced SB 2421, titled the Clarifying Legal Exclusions Around Regulated (CLEAR) Waters Act . The short bill was cosponsored by six other senate Republicans and seeks to categorically exclude certain types of water bodies from regulation under the Clean Water Act. Given the focus, the bill overlaps with the Waters of the U.S., which is currently being reworked by the Environmental Protection Agency and the Army Corps of Engineers.

“I am making it CLEAR that the federal government has no businesses regulating cooling ponds, municipal treatment plants, groundwater and streams that only flow after rainfall under WOTUS,” Ernst says.

The bill , which was referred to the Senate’s Environment and Public Works committee, would make the following exclusions to the definition of “navigable waters” within the Clean Water Act:

Any element of a waste treatment system, such as settling lagoons or treatment ponds.
Ephemeral water bodies that flow only after rain.
Groundwater.
“Any other features determined to be excluded by the Administrator and the Secretary of the Army, acting through the Chief of Engineers.’’

The bill in context

The bill is redundant to many elements of the Supreme Court’s 2023 Sackett decision , which is directing EPA’s on-going WOTUS rework effort. For example, the 2023 Sacket decision already excludes waste treatment system features like lagoons and treatment ponds.

Though groundwater has not been regulated as navigable waters, EPA notes groundwater “ is often hydrologically connected to navigable waters ” as it relates to carrying pollutants. Under the 2023 Sackett decision, however, groundwater would only count as navigable waters if a groundwater-fed wetland connected to a traditionally navigable water.

Still, agricultural voices have praised the bill. Iowa’s Secretary of Agriculture, Mike Naig, praised Ernst for championing the state’s farmers and businesses for instance.

“This legislation will provide much-needed clarity and consistency when it comes to WOTUS, helping end the constant policy whiplash that changes with each new administration. It’s a common-sense approach that brings certainty to those who are working every day to responsibly manage our land and water.”

WOTUS rework recent action

Agricultural stakeholders have long demanded regulatory certainty around WOTUS and its implementation. This was a resounding theme of listening sessions held by EPA earlier this year .

“By making federal regulation consistent, clear and by leaving room for state primacy in regulating other streams, lakes, wetlands and water features, EPA and the Corps can implement a rule that is both consistent with the Supreme Court’s decisions and with Congress’s intent in the Clean Water Act,” said Laura Campbell of Michigan Farm Bureau in the May 1 listening session held for agricultural stakeholders.

EPA has said it expects to release a proposed final WOTUS rule this summer , updating it to correspond with the 2023 Sackett decision. Once released, the rule will be available to the public for comment. The agency expects the new rule will go into effect by the end of 2025.

Though not directly connected to the WOTUS rework effort, EPA has recently put out a call for public comment on challenges stakeholders have had with CWA Section 401 implementation. This deals with individual states’ ability to put limits on certain types of federal action that might impact water quality within their jurisdiction. Interested stakeholders have until 11:59 p.m. EDT on Aug. 6 to submit comments on Regulations.gov or the Federal Register .

Microsoft-Partnered Project Funds Improved Irrigation in CA

Thu, 10 Jul 2025 21:37:23 GMT

In early summer, Kilimo — a Latin America-based climatech company focused on improving agricultural water security — announced it had launched an irrigation improvement project in California’s Central Valley in partnership with Microsoft and Netafim.

According to Kilimo, the farms participating in the new Central Valley project raise forage crops such as winter grass and summer silage corn, wheat and tomatoes. Like previous similar projects with Microsoft in Chile and Mexico, the new project will transition participating farmers currently using flood irrigation to drip irrigation.

“The conversion to drip irrigation is going to be fully financed by us and the corporate partner,” says Jairo Trad, CEO and co-founder of Kilimo. He stresses that this partnership is quite unique: “This is a private stakeholder financing another private stakeholder without the government intervening.”

Based on past results in earlier projects, Kilimo estimates the water savings could approach 50%.

Microsoft’s involvement in the project is part of its commitment to becoming water positive by 2030 . This commitment includes supporting projects that replenish more water than the company consumes.

“We’re thrilled to collaborate with Kilimo and Netafim to support farmers in saving water in California’s Central Valley,” says Eliza Roberts, water lead at Microsoft, in a news release. “Irrigation conversion is a critical solution that preserves water and supports farmers in combating climate challenges.”

California irrigation ripe for improvement

Trad explains that Microsoft’s partnership on projects like the new Central Valley one is not just corporate responsibility, but pragmatic and proactive.

“Microsoft, like many other tech companies, understands that they have risk tied to water,” he says, giving examples like data centers that need water for cooling or manufacturing companies that use water in their processes. “Most of the water we use is in agriculture, so if you want to invest in reducing water risk, you have to work in the agricultural sector.”

As of 2023, an impressive 4.36 million acres (52.6%) of California’s 7.76 million acres of irrigated cropland were already under some form of drip or similarly efficient irrigation system. Across the country, there were only 6.43 million total acres under such systems, meaning California represented roughly two-thirds of the country’s total.

However, California also used 22.6 million acre feet of irrigation water — over three times that of the next-highest irrigator, Nebraska at 6.8 maf — making it the largest user of irrigation water in the country. It also had 2.95 million acres irrigated via gravity systems, which include various forms of flood irrigation.

Trad positions using flood irrigation is an example of a low-value use of water.

“Water is perpetually undervalued, even in areas where water is extremely scarce like California,” he says. It’s not that agriculture should have to pay more, he adds. “The question is: How can we realign incentives?”

Private-private partnerships

That is what partnerships like this one are trying to do, according to Trad. He describes such efforts as bringing new financing opportunities to farmers to improve their irrigation systems. But to get investments from companies like Microsoft, the water savings that might come from the switch must be measured and well documented. That’s where Kilimo comes in, Trad says.

“We have developed a solution and a set of methodologies that allow us to measure the volumetric water benefits in a way that is scalable, secure, comparable and that allows companies to be sure that the investment they are doing is well used and well measured,” he says.

The value proposition for participating farmers is great, too, he adds.

“They get a fully paid irrigation system,” he summarizes. “What we ask for in return — and this is us, not Microsoft — is access to the data. How much are you irrigating? So, we can prove that you are saving water.”

That and maintenance of the new equipment is an “extremely light” ask, Trad says. He compares it to the strings attached to government financing. He also calls this style of private-private partnership between water users and corporate organizations looking to mitigate their water risk an important growing trend.

“Companies are investing heavily in this,” he says. “This is private stakeholders engaging in reshaping how other private stakeholders are using water because they think that is going to be good for them too. And that’s great! What we need is for more people to do this.”

There Are Strategies to Deal With Washington's Drought ... But They Cost

Tue, 24 Jun 2025 22:24:45 GMT

While the word drought might conjure images of parched, cracked earth and crispy, brown vegetation, drought means different things in different places. For tree fruit growers in Washington, for instance, it means snowless mountains and sunburned fruit. But growers in the state are working on strategies to keep their orchards alive and well and having fruit available to consumers.

According to the most recent U.S. Drought Monitor, 87% of Washington is in some level of drought, ranging from abnormally dry to moderate drought. But that doesn’t tell all or even most of the story for the state’s tree fruit growers.

“Increasingly we have been seeing problems with drought in Washington state, both because we occasionally have years with lower precipitation overall, but more often our problem has been the pattern and format of our precipitation,” says Jon DeVaney, president of the Washington State Tree Fruit Association. He explains that for orchards east of the Cascades, irrigation-season water is stored primarily in the form of winter snowfall.

“If it flows out as rainfall or premature melt, then the water is not going to be available later in the season,” he continues.

That is exactly the situation facing the state and the whole of the Pacific Northwest.

According to the most recent drought status update from the National Integrated Drought Information System, the region is in a state of persistent snow drought and rapid spring snowmelt. Specifically in Oregon and Washington, the snow drought developed early due to low precipitation. The NIDIS says this was especially the case “along the west slope of the Washington Cascade Range, where many [Snow Telemetry] stations reported peak snow water equivalent of 50% to 69% of median. A handful of sites there reported less than 50% of median peak SWE.”

The peak snow water equivalent map for Washington as of June 2025.

(USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service)

The snowpack in the Washington Cascades was almost non-existent as of June 19, 2025.

(USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service.)

A drought emergency was declared for the Yakima Basin in April. It later expanded to 19 other watersheds in central Washington in early June. Washington is a center of fruit tree production, with roughly two thirds of U.S. apples grown in the state, with the Yakima Basin being central to the Washington apple growing industry.

Dealing with drought on the orchard

DeVaney says the increasingly-common drought situation in Washington points to the need for state-level investment in climate adaptation, primarily in water storage. But tree fruit growers are also taking steps to be more resilient in a future with less predictable precipitation and temperature patterns.

For example, a lot of Washington orchards already have an irrigation pond, DeVaney explains. This provides water during times of need out of season with usual irrigation water availability. It’s a strategy more growers are looking into.

“Having that on-site storage can be really beneficial, but it’s not cheap,” DeVaney says. “It can cost six figures to put in a new pond for your orchard. And, of course, if you’re putting in a pond, you’re taking land out of production.”

Another directly water-related strategy is paying annual crop growers for their water when there is sufficient early warning of drought conditions. That allows the annual crop growers to be paid to fallow their lands while getting the orchards the water they need to keep the growers’ long-term investments alive and productive, DeVaney says.

“Those irrigation districts do a really good job of that and that’s beneficial certainly,” he says, “but it is certainly an added cost for those growers to try to get water from their neighbors during a curtailed year.”

Another pair of strategies that are increasingly being used are specific to apples.

“A lot of folks don’t realize that the cells of apples are as susceptible to sunburn as humans are, so if the temperatures get too high, you can have damage to the fruit from those temperatures,” DeVaney says.

Traditionally the approach to this issue has been to have overhead cooling from sprinklers. Basically the same idea as having the kids run around in the sprinklers during summer, DeVaney says.

“That evaporative cooling effect is beneficial and reduces the surface temperature,” he says, “but, obviously, in a drought and intensive heat years, using more water may not be the best or even an available solution.”

So, apple producers are trying two different approaches: using shade cloth over orchards to offer UV protection and shifting sprinkling technology to produce mist, thereby reducing droplet size and water use while still getting the same cooling effect. Both of those strategies come with added costs, however. Shade cloths and the associated infrastructure come with costs and added annual labor to put it up and take it down. New misting infrastructure also comes with costs.

“The challenge in the current ag economy is you can solve one problem — constrained water — by replacing it with another resource, which is money,” he says, noting that money is often the scarcer resource. “It’s one thing to recognize that there are solutions and adaptations to climate challenges, but it’s another to actually pay for them because we are usually trading off one resource for another.”

State-level efforts to be more water resilient

While growers are taking the steps they can to improve their on-farm resiliency to increasing drought and uncertainty, becoming more adaptable to meet all of the state’s water stakeholders — agriculture, environment and beyond — takes state-level effort.

“I think the biggest water issue we’re facing is having the infrastructure to better manage the resource,” DeVaney says. While praising the state of Washington and its irrigation districts for making investments in a more versatile future, he also notes that “designing, permitting, and constructing some of those additional storage measures is going to take quite a while. That is a multi-decade effort.”

There are ongoing state-level efforts that run on a shorter timeline, however.

“A lot of our university researchers, including programs supported directly by industry dollars, are focused on climate resiliency and water management and heat management for our orchards,” DeVaney says, highlighting ongoing research on varietals.

“Some varieties are more vulnerable to damage from high heat than other apple varieties, one of the more popular apple varieties being Honeycrisp,” he says. “While that’s a very popular variety with growers and consumers, that is a factor that producers have to think about.”

Another big water issue DeVaney cites as being pressing to the tree fruit growers of Washington is public perception and understanding where water management is concerned.

“The changing climate can mean, over time, you’re going to have to have more interventions to manage that resource for optimal outcomes, both for farming but also for natural resource use,” he says. While he acknowledges that the hands-off approach can sound romantic, more management often results in better outcomes for everyone.

“I think that that is one of the biggest impediments, just getting people to recognize that beneficial management is not just a grower concern,” he continues. “Making further investments in managing our river systems can ensure that there’s water available for irrigation, and to manage flows for salmon and threatened or endangered species that are using those rivers. We can manage the flow levels to ensure that the temperatures are conducive to healthy rivers and streams.”

And growers, irrigation districts and Washington are good at managing the challenges of increasingly frequent drought and uncertain weather patterns, DeVaney says.

“They put costs on growers, but for the end consumer, it’s usually pretty invisible,” he says, adding that consumers won’t see a decline in quantity or quality of Washington tree fruit. “But they should have some sympathy for growers who are having to put in a lot of extra cost and effort in order to ensure that outcome.”

Proposed Final WOTUS Rule Coming This Summer

Mon, 23 Jun 2025 21:24:09 GMT

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and U.S. Department of the Army announced June 17 that the groups expect to issue a final Waters of the U.S. that will bring it in line with the Supreme Court’s 2023 Sackett decision by the end of 2025.

The announcement came in the wake of nine listening sessions the groups conducted to get input from key stakeholders. Those listening sessions included one that sought comments from the state level and another that focused on industries including agriculture .

“When it comes to the definition of ‘waters of the United States,’ EPA has an important responsibility to protect water resources while setting clear and practical rules of the road that accelerate economic growth and opportunity,” says EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin. “These listening sessions gave us real-world perspectives as we work toward a proposed rule that follows the Supreme Court decision in Sackett, ends the regulatory uncertainty and ping-pong that has persisted for years, supports our nation’s farmers who feed and fuel the world, and advances the agency’s Powering the Great American Comeback initiative.”

During the state-level listening session, commentors stressed the need for cooperative federalism and flexibility. During the industry-focused listening session, those representing agricultural interests frequently echoed the need for a predictable, understandable definition that is consistently enforced.

“The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers plays a key role in implementing the Clean Water Act. The importance of input from all our stakeholders including landowners, local governments, the states, Tribes and others is critical to how we undertake our statutory responsibilities,” says Lee Forsgren, acting assistant secretary of the Army for Civil Works. “We understand the importance of communication and appreciate the feedback we received as we move forward together with EPA on this important effort.”

What’s coming for WOTUS

EPA’s press office tells The Packer the agencies expect a proposed final rule will be issued in the coming months during the summer. This proposed rule will be available on the Federal Register .

“Once proposed, EPA and Army will open a public comment period, review comments and finalize a rule. Per typical agency practice, public comments would be submitted to the rulemaking docket, including via Regulations.gov ,” the EPA press office says.

The process of reviewing public comment can take some time, particularly on regulations that come with as much public attention as WOTUS. The EPA press office noted that it received over 45,000 letters submitted via the recommendations docket that was open alongside the listening sessions, for example.

The agencies said they intend to issue a final rule by the end of 2025 after the public input is reviewed.

“Once the rule is finalized, it typically takes effect 60 days after publication in the Federal Register pursuant to Congressional Review Act requirements,” the EPA press office says.

More information about WOTUS can be found online . Interested members of the public can also subscribe to specific agencies on the Federal Register to be alerted when new documents for public comment are available.

Startup brings smart irrigation retrofits to growers

Thu, 22 May 2025 18:53:09 GMT

Arthur Chen, CEO and co-founder of the irrigation startup Verdi, came from a farming family.

“I was actually the first generation that didn’t have to farm growing up and that’s ironically what got me very interested in agriculture,” he said.

Chen co-founded Verdi in 2020 with fellow Canadian entrepreneur Roman Kozak. The company produces devices that can retrofit existing irrigation infrastructure into an app-connected automated irrigation system. Chen said growers currently using Verdi’s devices liken them to smart home devices, but for watering specialty crops.

With the startup, Chen brought his engineering training to bear on growers’ pain points around irrigation. He said the company is especially focused on the adoption of automation technology.

“When you talk to any grower, they tend to understand the benefits of automated irrigation,” he told The Packer, citing labor and water savings being key. “But about 95% of them we found still prefer not to use automation. They prefer to do things manually instead. As we dug into it, we realized that it’s because automation is really expensive and tends to be hard to set up.”

Chen said his company is trying to help growers overcome those adoption barriers by making an easy-to-install automation solution.

“We can retrofit to a wide variety of different equipment. If you have a valve, for example, we can retrofit that to turn it into a smart valve,” he explained. “Really all it takes is you have to plug in a few wires in order for that valve to be controlled remotely. Then you scan a QR code on our devices, and that connects it to the internet just by scanning it.”

Chen said the devices can be applied to a wide variety of devices, including pumps or even “a single piece of drip tube if you want row-level irrigation control or monitoring.”

To date, the company has devices in over 5,000 acres of mostly vineyards and fruit and nut orchards in North America, but the company’s next milestone is getting into 10,000 acres, he said.

New financing allows for expansion

Verdi announced its latest seed round raised $6.5 million Canadian ($4.7 million U.S.) May 15. Chen said the financing will allow Verdi to expand its products and reach more growers.

“It really allows us to continue what we’ve been doing with co-developing this alongside growers in the field,” he told The Packer. “There is a lot of outside capital that has come into agriculture that is more speculative. What we’ve focused on with this financing is to work with strategic partners, partners who have a vested interest in the success of growers.”

SVG Ventures led the funding round.

“We invested in Verdi because they’re solving one of agriculture’s biggest challenges — climate resilience — through a solution that is not only innovative but also practical and scalable,” SVG Ventures CEO John Hartnett said in Verdi’s news release about the seed round. “Their ability to integrate with existing farm infrastructure makes their platform a game changer for growers looking to stay competitive in a changing world.”

In addition to the goal of expanding into 10,000 acres, Chen said Verdi is aiming to expand into different crops.

“We work with over 20 different types of crops right now, so we are quite agnostic,” he said. “The new one that we’ve gotten into, especially with this new round of financing, is going to vegetable crops. So, [we’re] making sure we’re developing this in the right way that serves growers in that particular vertical.”

He added that the company’s current focus is on working with growers who already use drip or sprinkler irrigation, since that infrastructure can most benefit from retrofitting. However, Verdi is looking to expand to meet other grower needs too.

“A really big piece of that is really leaning into the data that growers can get from various sources, but actually turning it into something actionable for them,” Chen said. “That’s a big focus for us in terms of our software development.”

Agricultural water practices critical to California’s success

Wed, 07 May 2025 12:58:50 GMT

In late April, California Gov. Gavin Newsom declared the state the fourth-largest economy in the world at a nominal gross domestic product of $4.1 trillion. He additionally called it top in the nation for agriculture .

Indeed, California had $59.4 billion in receipts for agricultural products in 2023 (most recent complete data) . The state also claimed over three-quarters of all cash receipts for fruits and nuts throughout the nation and almost half for vegetables and melons.

“California isn’t just keeping pace with the world — we’re setting the pace,” Newsom said in news release. “Our economy is thriving because we invest in people, prioritize sustainability, and believe in the power of innovation.”

But there is no agriculture in California without water, and water is a precious commodity in the mostly arid and frequently drought-parched state.

Scarcity enforces sustainability

“There has always been a shortage,” said Charles Hillyer, director of the Center for Irrigation Technology at California State University, Fresno, speaking to The Packer on water in California. “We have to be sustainable.”

Hillyer explained that California is deeply committed to permanent crops like fruit and nut orchards and vineyards.

“You can’t abandon that crop. If you have a drought and you can’t keep the crop alive, you’re not just losing this year’s crop, you’re losing the whole orchard,” he said. “So, we have to plan for, not necessarily less water, but using it in a more sustainable way.”

One way that California growers have done this in the past has been to rely on groundwater pumping for irrigation to mitigate the uncertainty of surface water supplies, Hillyer said. He also pointed to the state’s 2014 Sustainable Groundwater Management Act as an example of California’s efforts to keep groundwater use sustainable.

“Were not the first place in the United States that has tried to strive for sustainability, but the way the law works is a bit different from other states,” he said. “It’s innovative in some ways, but that is how the state is putting sustainability first in terms of agricultural water use.”

He also pointed out that water scarcity in California contributed to growers in the state being early adopters of technology like drip irrigation so they could do more with less.

“California growers, because they don’t have enough water and are growing very high-value crops, they invest in more efficient technologies,” Hillyer said. “Because of the margins, this is a place where you can try new things and be innovative and take risks.”

Driving innovation investments

Meena Sankaran, founder and CEO of Ketos — a California- and Texas-based company offering a vertically integrated water quality monitoring platform for agricultural, commercial and metropolitan water users — also noted that California growers have been early adopters of smart water technologies. She pointed to several unique elements of California as potential reasons: anything from proximity to Silicon Valley to having grower co-op systems that other states lack that can help disseminate new technologies.

“The innovations across these farms has been significant over the years,” she said. Specifically regarding agriculture’s contribution to the state’s new economic status, she added that, “it’s a culmination of years and years being smart about how water is being used.”

The state also has invested in innovation, according to Hillyer, who points to his own organization as an example.

“The California Energy Commission invested several million dollars in technology incubators, and the Water, Energy and Technology Incubator at Fresno State is one of those centers,” he said. “What we do is basically help startup companies with innovative ideas go from an idea to making money.”

The Center for Irrigation Technology works with the public and private sectors to advance irrigation, water and energy technologies and management practices through testing.

Focused on a sustainable future

Newsom said California’s economy was growing faster at 6% in 2024 than the three larger economies: U.S. (5.3%), China (2.6%) and Germany (2.9%). For that to continue, California’s ag sector needs to stay strong. For that to happen, the innovations and dedication to sustainable water use must continue.

Hillyer said the state will need to keep sustainable groundwater use at the forefront.

“We can’t assume that the groundwater will always make up the difference with the surface water,” he said. “There’s going to have to be some sort of moderation in terms of planning and planting of orchards that takes into account that we can’t just pump as much as we need to out of the ground. We have to have some sort of balancing to make this system sustainable.”

Sankaran suggested that future efforts to spur innovation could come from the state’s economic plans. She gave the example of changes to state regulations to allow for subsidies for growers adopting water-wise technologies.

“Right now, the state revolving fund is only applicable to nonprofits, to tribal organizations or to city utilities. It does not apply to growers,” she said. “If there was some sort of SRF allocation to growers, especially growers who are going above and beyond in terms of being sustainable, it would be an incentive for more growers to be conscientious.”

In the spirit of sustainability, Sankaran added that California and society at large must not let farmer numbers dwindle given the essential role they play.

“It is critical that we support and incentivize farmers very intentionally in our economic plans.”

Your next read:

How agriculture makes California a leader in the global economy

States seek cooperation on WOTUS definitions

Tue, 29 Apr 2025 21:46:09 GMT

During the first of several listening sessions on the future of Waters of the U.S., state-level stakeholders had a clear message for the Environmental Protection Agency and the Army Corps of Engineers: Respect cooperative federalism, and work with the states and their unique needs.

“Rule No. 1 is for the federal government not to get into the way of, or complicate efforts on behalf of, the states’ environmental agencies,” said Ben Grumbles, executive director of the Environmental Council of the States.

“All of our members support the rule of law, the value of wetlands and small waters, and the need for cooperative federalism to help achieve the overall goals of the Clean Water Act.”

Cooperative federalism and state flexibility

Cooperative federalism refers to the fact the CWA gives states the right to set standards and issue permits if they meet federal requirements. Sections 101b and 510 of CWA address the concept of cooperative federalism. This provision recognizes the interconnected nature of the state- and federal-level efforts to protect waters of the U.S.

Most speakers stressed the importance of this concept in their comments, some very directly.

“The section 401 certification program is an embodiment of these cooperative federalism principles,” said Jennifer Congdon, director of federal affairs for New York Department of Environmental Conservation. She explained that federal agencies cannot issue a permit or license for an activity that could discharge into a water of the U.S. unless the state either allows it or waives the need.

“If more wetlands are excluded from WOTUS, then certain federal projects would not require a section 401 water quality certification by the states, and it could prevent New York from determining whether certain projects would impair water quality in our own state, thus violating the right to do so as enshrined in the Clean Water Act.”

Many commenters spoke less directly about cooperative federalism, instead stressing the need for flexibility considering each state’s unique hydrologic situation. Commenters speaking for arid southwestern states pointed to the ephemeral nature of flows and water quality concerns that come with desert environments, for example.

Megan Kernan, energy, water and major water projects division manager for Washington’s Department of Fish and Wildlife, highlighted the vast difference in the state’s hydrology from the coast, which gets roughly 120 inches of precipitation, to the east, which can see less than 10.

Gene McCabe, director of the division of water with Alaska’s Department of Conservation, pointed out his state has an ecosystem unique in the entire nation.

“Applying the Clean Water Act to Alaska’s permafrost wetland imposes unnecessary complexity and delay, forcing a framework designed for the lower 48 states onto an arctic ecosystem,” he said. “Alaska asserts the Clean Water Act, as it stands, is simply too blunt an instrument to manage these areas effectively.”

Kernan summarized many commenters’ statements on the need for flexibility, saying: “We understand the desire for clear and easy-to-administer protocols for implementing the WOTUS rule, but the reality is that ecological systems are diverse, highly nuanced and often difficult to neatly bin into rigid categories.”

While each representative from the different states made specific comments based on their state’s interests, all speakers shared several core themes:

The agencies must use science-based, data-driven approaches to jurisdictional determinations.
Definitions must allow for flexibility for the states
States have rich, localized research and knowledge on water quality.
Even non-jurisdictional waters are important to the states’ economies and environments.

Future listening sessions, engagement on WOTUS

The state-focused listening session was held April 29 and was the first of several the EPA and Corps are holding. The listening sessions are part of an effort to bring WOTUS into alignment with the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2023 Sackett decision .

“We all know we’ve been here on this WOTUS journey a long time, so our effort here is to provide a regulation that will stand the test of time, prioritizing practical implementation approaches,” said Stacey Jensen, director of the oceans, wetlands and communities division of EPA, who hosted the listening session.

Additional listening sessions will be held through May 6. More information on future listening sessions can be found online. The EPA and Corps are also accepting written federalism feedback from states, local governments and their representative organizations through June 2. Interested parties can email their comments to CWAwotus@epa.gov .

Jensen said the agency expects to solicit public comments on a forthcoming proposed rule. She encouraged members of the public to keep watch on the EPA’s WOTUS site and the Federal Register for that and submit written feedback when available.

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Biden administration invests up to $400M to address water conservation

Thu, 01 Aug 2024 20:03:26 GMT

Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack says the USDA will invest $400 million in at least 18 irrigation districts to help farmers continue commodity production while also conserving water across the West.

This funding — which will support irrigation districts and producers in using innovative water savings technologies and farming practices while producing water-saving commodities in the face of continued drought — is expected to conserve up to 50,000 acre-feet in water use across 250,000 acres of irrigated land in production, while expanding and creating new, sustainable market opportunities, according to a news release.

The funding builds on the Biden-Harris administration’s work to conserve water, increase the efficiency of water use, upgrade existing infrastructure and overall strengthen water security in the West, the release said.

The Department of the Interior’s Bureau of Reclamation announced in May 2024 it had staved off the immediate possibility of the Colorado River System’s reservoirs from falling to critically low elevations that would threaten water deliveries and power production, the release said.

Due to record conservation investments as well as improved hydrology, Lake Mead levels today are the highest since May 2021, the release said. The administration is now working to ensure the long-term sustainability and resilience by focusing on long-term water conservation in several basins across the west.

“Agricultural producers are the backbone of rural communities across the West and many of them are struggling under prolonged drought conditions,” Vilsack said in the release. “USDA is taking an ‘all hands’ approach to help address this challenge, including these new partnerships with irrigation districts to support producers. We want to scale up the tools available to keep farmers farming, while also voluntarily conserving water and expanding markets for water-saving commodities.”

USDA worked to select irrigation districts based on several commodity production and water management-related criteria in order to maximize the ability to achieve program objectives, leveraging available data from the Department of the Interior’s Bureau of Reclamation to ensure close alignment and partnership, the release said. USDA’s Economic Research Service provided data and analysis to support the preliminary selections. Districts that have been preliminarily selected for potential inclusion in this program include:

Black Canyon Irrigation District, Idaho.
Brooklyn Canal Company, Utah.
Central Oregon Irrigation District, Oregon.
Central Arizona Irrigation and Drainage District, Arizona.
Corcoran Irrigation District, California.
East Columbia Basin Irrigation District, Washington.
Elephant Butte Irrigation District, New Mexico.
Glenn – Colusa Irrigation District, Calififornia.
Greybull Valley Irrigation District, Wyoming.
Hidalgo & Cameron Counties Irrigation District 9, Texas.
Huntley Project Irrigation District, Montana.
Imperial Irrigation District, California.
Maricopa – Stanfield Irrigation and Drainage District, Arizona.
Palisade Irrigation District, Colorado.
Quincy Columbia Basin Irrigation District, Washington.
Solano Irrigation District, California.
Sutter Mutual Water Company, California.
Truckee-Carson Irrigation District, Nevada.

The preliminary selected districts may receive up to $15 million each in the awards and will enter into sub-agreements with the producers participating within the district. Depending on available funding, awards to additional districts may be possible, the release said.

USDA reports decline in irrigated farmland

Fri, 01 Nov 2024 12:49:46 GMT

Irrigated farmland in the U.S. has declined slightly in the past five years, USDA numbers show.

Newly released statistics published by the USDA indicate the U.S. has 212,714 farms with 53.1 million irrigated acres. That includes 81 million acre-feet of water applied on farms, according to the 2023 Irrigation and Water Management Survey results, published in late October by the USDA’s National Agricultural Statistics Service.

In 2018, the irrigation survey results showed that there were 231,474 farms with 55.9 million irrigated acres, which included 83.4 million acre-feet of water. The results show the number of farms irrigating, the amount of land irrigated and the total water used for irrigation decreased between 2018 and 2023, according to the report.

“The 2023 Irrigation and Water Management Survey, conducted every five years, expands on the data collected in the 2022 Census of Agriculture,” NASS Administrator Joseph L. Parsons said in a news release. “This report offers detailed, comprehensive, up-to-date information specific to the agriculture industry’s use, management, and investment of water supplies and irrigation systems.”

Data highlights from the 2023 Irrigation and Water Management Survey include:

The total amount of water used in 2023 was 81 million acre-feet, down 2.8% from 2018.
The average acre-feet applied per acre was 1.5, which was the same as the 2018 irrigation survey. (An acre-foot is the amount of water required to cover one acre to a depth of one foot.)
The largest portion of irrigated farmland acres in the U.S. was dedicated to cropland – including grain and oilseed crops, vegetables, nursery and greenhouse, and hay crops.
Farmers irrigated 49.6 million acres of harvested cropland acres in the open in 2023.
Groundwater from on-farm wells accounted for 54% of irrigation water applied to acres in the open; the average well depth in 2023 was 241 feet.
The irrigation results show 12.6 million more irrigated acres with sprinkler systems than gravity irrigation.
Five states accounted for around one-half of the irrigated acres and more than half of all water applied: Arkansas, California, Idaho, Nebraska and Texas.
In general, equipment is one of the leading irrigation expenditures with farmers and ranchers spending $3 billion on irrigation equipment, facilities, land improvements and computer technology in 2023; energy costs for pumping well and surface water amounted to $3.3 billion, according to the survey.
Irrigated area of horticulture under protection was 1.7 billion square feet in 2023. This compares with 1.5 billion square feet in 2018.
Irrigated horticulture grown in the open was 598,980 acres in 2023. This compares with 581,936 acres in 2018.

The 2023 Irrigation and Water Management Survey followed up with approximately 35,000 producers who indicated in the 2022 Census of Agriculture that they irrigated or had irrigation equipment. Producers provided information on water sources and amount of water used; acres irrigated by type of system; irrigation use by crop; and system investments and energy costs, according to the USDA.

“The 2023 Irrigation and Water Management Survey data provide valuable information that producers, farm organizations, businesses, state departments of agriculture, elected representatives and legislative bodies at all levels of government can use to make agriculture water use more efficient,” Parsons said. “From comparing water use by application methods or appraising water use trends to developing improved technologies or federal programs, these data are crucial to the industry.”