From the U.S. Government Accountability Office, www.gao.gov

Transcript for: Irrigated Agriculture and Water Conservation

Description: As irrigation technologies and practices evolve, we talk
about what it means for water usage.

Related GAO Work: GAO-20-128SP: Irrigated Agriculture: Technologies,
Practices, and Implications for Water Scarcity

Released: November 2019


[ Background Music ]

[ Tim Persons: ] It is important that just saving the water itself, and
through the technologies will not necessarily increase the conservation
of the water.

[ Matt Oldham: ] Welcome to GAO's Watchdog Report, your source for news
and information from the US Government Accountability Office. I'm Matt
Oldham. Irrigated agriculture accounts for more than 40 percent of
freshwater use in the United States, and in some areas of the country,
demand for freshwater outpaces what is naturally available. With me is
Tim Persons, a Managing Director for GAO's Science Technology Assessment
and Analytics team, and we're going to talk about a GAO study looking at
different irrigation technologies and practices, and how they relate to
water scarcity. Thanks for joining me, Tim.

[ Tim Persons: ] Thanks, Matt. Thanks for having me on.

[ Matt Oldham: ] First off, water scarcity. How important of an issue is
this?

[ Tim Persons: ] Undoubtedly, a very important issue, especially, you've
heard the 'all politics are local' type statement. Water issues are
definitely local, so, as you know, the US is a diverse country in terms
of its geology, geography, and climate, and regions, and so on. And so,
massive amounts of the country, particularly in the West, although we're
seeing some drought stress in the Southeast and others, it is not simply
a western issue. It is an agricultural issue, but definitely the western
states dominate this naturally because it's so arid, it's dry, again,
different temperatures and things, and yet there's so many of the
western states are in the agricultural economy, and this is very
pressing. So, water stress has been felt, to greater or lesser extent,
across these various regions, and that's why we needed to do this study.

[ Matt Oldham: ] So, what types of technologies and practices does the
study cover?

[ Tim Persons: ] So, the main focus of this ultimately went down to
irrigation and then the various forms of irrigation. Irrigation has been
around a while, but the way in which you irrigate. There's the
conventional gravity, where you just drip things on there, but there's
also more pressure-based systems that spray. Think of, like, a spray
nozzle on a spray bottle. The way the water is dispensed may be able to
yield greater crop benefit for less resource. So, that's 'more crop per
drop,' as the saying goes. So, that's particularly, one particular area,
but also, I think the idea of just good practices, in terms of
scheduling on those technologies, the when would you do it? And then I
think another key area that is more of an enabling technology in this,
though, is just a lot of this is being driven by data science, the
so-called datafication of things, having better sensors out there,
weather information and things, which would inform the scheduling, which
would then inform how you do your irrigation and how you apply the water
to the crop from an irrigation.

[ Matt Oldham: ] So, does that mean we can expect these new technologies
or these new practices will lead to more efficient water use?

[ Tim Persons: ] So, that's a great point, and one of the things that
we've found in this particular study is that, in general, that might
sound like an attractive outcome or a logical way of thinking,
initially. However, it is important that just saving the water itself,
and through the technologies, will not necessarily increase the
conservation of the water.

[ Background Music ]

[ Matt Oldham: ] So, it sounds like with these new technologies and
practices we're talking about, things like scheduling changes or
data-driven sensors, that individuals or farmers may be able to use
water more efficiently, but that doesn't necessarily mean there is a net
improvement on water scarcity issues. So, Tim, does the study look at
the likelihood of farmers adopting some of these new technologies and
practices in the interest of using less water or conserving more water?

[ Tim Persons: ] It does, and one of the things that we found was that
the farmers aren't necessarily pursuing technologies just for the sake
of conservation. That is one of the things that policymakers may want to
incentivize, if the goal is to recharge or to try to have your cake and
eat it, too, from a water perspective, to do that. But conservation,
itself, isn't what's driving that.

[ Matt Oldham: ] Tim, you had mentioned information that could be
helpful for policymakers. Was there anything else in this report that
may be helpful for policymakers?

[ Tim Persons: ] Sure, I think the two key policy options that we're
presenting in this report are that our policymakers could promote
various programs or leveraging systems to look at the use of more
efficient irrigation technology and practices, and rethink irrigation.
The second area was this promotion of this precision ag technologies.
There's a tremendous amount of weather data and computational power now
available if you had the broadband access, thinking about cloud
computing and things as a key resource. You could even compute advanced
things and better schedule, better apply the water, but you need more
precision ag technologies and more sensors, like soil moisture sensors,
and even more refined weather stations to get greater resolution, even
down to the farm level.

[ Matt Oldham: ] So then, as always, the last question. What is the
bottom line of this report?

[ Tim Persons: ] I think that this is a two-part thing. I think
promoting technologies, promoting water efficiency is good. The
promotion also needs to be, the second part of it is included with
incentives for actually conserving the water. How do we, again, do the
farming better and with less resource and yet still equivalent if not
greater outcome, and yet still save the water where it's needed?

[ Matt Oldham: ] Tim Persons was talking about a GAO study on the water
use implications for different technologies and practices in irrigated
agriculture. Thank you for your time, Tim.

[ Tim Persons: ] Thanks, Matt.

[ Background Music]

[ Matt Oldham: ] And thank you for listening to the Watchdog Report. To
hear more podcasts, subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts. For more from the
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