Financial Barriers for Modern Ag Technology

This is Tim Hammerich of the Ag Information Network with your Farm of the Future Report.

Netafim, the inventor of drip irrigation, wants to bridge the financial gap that keeps farmers from adopting modern technologies by connecting them to capital via their Corporate Partnership Program. Netafim North America President Mike Hemman gives an example of how this program is working.

Hemman… “In these particular cases, we found farmers that are growing alfalfa. They would like to install drip irrigation because you can utilize substantially less water, in some cases, 50% less water. You can also have other sustainability benefits like reduction in greenhouse gas emissions because you're applying fertilizer through the drip irrigation tubing underground. But again, the challenge here has been capital. So what happens is we link them up with one of these corporate partners. They provide capital to help offset the cost of the irrigation system. We automate that irrigation system so that we can measure the amount of water that's being utilized, compare that back against a benchmark of how much water they would've utilized with flood, and we can show the savings in acre feet. Then we translate that back to gallons of water for the corporate. And they can utilize that in their reporting to show that they have enabled savings of x gallons of water.”

Netafim has already helped farmers with projects ranging from 80 acres to 220 acres, and provided between $50,000 - $2M per project.