Regulatory compliance
The food industry is facing tighter regulations and it is increasingly more difficult to run a farming operation. New groundwater regulations have been placed in California.
PumpMonitor is a simple solution that tracks and reports water use with local agencies. Growers and agencies save 50% to 80% on implementation costs because we leverage existing SmartMeters. There is no hardware to install, and we integrate other telemetry stations to track the groundwater table (groundwater recharge) and provide 100% visibility in what is happening in the basin.
Groundwater Sustainability Plans (GSP) can be implemented at a fraction of the cost of a closed architecture. This can be done while protecting the privacy of growers and ensuring long-term access to the information for future generations. Check our white-paper on SGMA and the benefits of using an open architecture based on best industry practices.
Resource efficiency
Our data mining platform was tested on over 4,000 acres of farmed land between 2015 and 2017. We worked with UC Davis and UC Santa Barbara to understand the impact on energy efficiency and water use efficiency.
CropMonitor achieved an increase of 9% in water use efficiency (ratio of crop yield divided by water application) across alfalfa, almond, tomato, etc. PumpMonitor reduced the energy intensity of pumping but it varied greatly by farms and by types of irrigation systems (drip, micro-jet, and flood). The total reduction in energy varied from 9% to 33% with a weighted average per acre of 13%.
What does that mean to your bottom-line? There is an inherent relationship between controlling farming inputs and optimizing crop output by providing the right amount of water and nutrients to plants. Resource efficiency can also help with profitability.
Increased profits
Growers who implemented our PumpMonitor and CropMonitor products, consistently achieve better production quantity and quality by identifying early on where they can recover revenue losses on the field, and how to reduce the risk of diseases with better irrigation. On average, farms see an increase in profits of $200 per acre. This was the case during our three-year trials for mature orchards and row crops that are rotated within a ranch.
Talk to any grower and you will learn quickly that you cannot claim any increase in yield because so many factors impact crop production. However, our treatment and control fields during trials provide results rooted in science that weed out external factors and give a reliable indication. All in all, farms and processors benefit from our platform year-over-year and can re-invest the new cash flow to make incremental improvements.
Fifth Open Farm hosted online by PG&E
