Managing Drought, Floods, and a Changing Climate
By Jackie Pucci, Senior Editor, CropLife and AgriBusiness Global
As extreme weather conditions become increasingly common with climate change, innovations to help agricultural producers address this challenge are becoming more important than ever to feed the world’s growing population.
In 2022, drought conditions across the Midwest led to less grain fill time, earlier grain dry-down and poor nutrient uptake. Dry soil conditions can slow root growth and reduce the ability to transport nutrients into the plant. Research shows that drought stress during pollination can cause up to a 50% loss in yield, whereas just prior to or just after this crop stage period, drought yield loss ranges from 20% to 25%, according to data from Golden Harvest, the U.S. seed brand owned by Syngenta.
According to a November report by McKinsey & Co., blistering heat scorched wheat fields in India, reducing expected yields by an average of 15% and prompting the country to ban wheat exports. Europe is emerging from a drought estimated to be the worst in at least 500 years. Relative to the five-year average, the forecasts for EU crop yields for corn, soybean, and sunflowers have been cut by 16%, 15%, and 12%, respectively. McKinsey estimated that to up 14% of global rain-fed cropland was affected by moderate to extreme levels of drought between March and August 2022, representing a production value of $6 billion, with some crops and regions disproportionally affected.
“I’ve been in this business since ’92, and I don’t remember a time when we’ve been this dry,” says Mike Henderson, Executive Vice President, Ag Markets with the Cary, NC-based generics player Atticus LLC. “In all my travels and in all the conversations I’m having, I’m torn around this idea about how big of an impact we’re seeing of the water situation in certain parts of the ag world. I was in California recently, and in every conversation [the theme of drought] dominated. From northwest Iowa to northeast Nebraska to southwestern Kansas to the panhandle of Texas, there is something different than a year ago. We had drought a year ago, but it was not as widespread and severe as it is today.”
We sat down with a variety of industry experts to share critical methods and technologies that are helping shape the future of agriculture in terms of water management.
1. Opt for a holistic approach integrating incremental changes on the farm rather than costly all-or-nothing deals, says Josh Shuler, Product Team Manager for water management at Trimble. Whether it is landforming, subsurface drainage projects, or control structures that can help transform water management, these can be done in stages, he notes.
“Every field has a water problem of some type. Do we have to do something to every acre? Probably not, but there’s always something we can do to improve it, whether it's getting two or three acres that are often drown-outs or burn-ups on a hump or hill.”
Too often, an out-of-sight, out-of-mind mentality – when cycles of heavy drought or rain are not present – costs the producer, he notes. Trimble strives to educate producers on the benefits of control structures, for example. Agri Drain builds subsurface water system control structures, which can be adjusted to help keep the water table low in the spring, enabling corn to establish a much more robust root structure.“When conditions do dry out, you have more available water and have less crop stress that often results in less disease pressure and better yields. Stress is not non-existent, but it’s highly reduced simply for the fact that the roots are deeper,” Shuler explains, adding that automation options are also possible, where the gates of the structure raise and lower the water table based on the growth stage of the crop and seasonal rainfall.
That initial sticker shock customers experience is alleviated once they understand the ROI — for example, land values in most states increase from 5% to 15% by adding subsurface tile alone. A conservative estimate on yield increases with this improvement is 25% to 30% in the first year, he says.
Landforming improvements result in 15% to more than 20% yield bumps in year one, depending on the severity of the existing issues. Further, excess water can be leveraged and used in other ways. “Our main goal is not just more yield,” Shuler says. “It’s yield consistency.” And while Trimble is traditionally known as a guidance systems company, he points out that water management solutions are critical to the business because none of these technologies genuinely meet their full potential without building a solid foundation — the land and soil.
2. Consider drones. They have entered the conversation to help producers save on not only labor, but water. The Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems International (AUVSI) estimates that farms will eventually account for an 80% share of the commercial drone market because farming by drone instead of tractor can reduce water and fuel needs, cut costs, and improve crop yields.
Hylio is launching the largest commercial spray drone available to farmers today. With an 18-gallon capacity and up to 40-foot swath width, the AG-272 can cover up to 50 acres/hour at a 2 GPA application rate. Arthur Erickson, co-founder and CEO of the company, sat down with Meister Media in late January to talk about how drones can cut water use. Drones are more flexible tools than tractors in that they don’t need to traverse graded terrain and slopes and can get the job done no matter the conditions, he notes. “What we’ve seen is that the drone can use about 10 times less water per acre of application than an equivalent terrestrial vehicle,” Erickson says, and compared with planes or helicopters, the water savings is 3x to 4x. In research trials being conducted, data is showing that as little as a quarter to half a gallon of water per acre is needed in a drone, he says.
Besides the water savings imparted by spray drone use, Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) are also being used increasingly to monitor drought conditions. In one case, a team of scholars are using Unmanned Aerial System (UAS) technology to help smallholder farmers in Malawi to boost crop production in the face of emerging threats posed by climate change. Using special cameras, the UAS captures images that allow researchers to quantify how much water and chlorophyll is in the plants, which allows for 3-D measurements of plants in different parts of the field, according to the AUVSI. Researchers can use this data to recommend potential fixes to low crop yields.
3. More drought-tolerant seed varieties and wider crop chemical application windows are just some of the developments in the innovation pipelines of the multinationals.Livio Tedeschi, President of BASF Agricultural Solutions, in a recent conversation with Meister Media, explained that water management and resource management is becoming much prevalent a theme at the company, propelled by more weather volatility.
BASF has also spearheaded projects focused on irrigation systems to ensure it can help build a holistic support system for crops. For example, it partnered with NaanDanJain to deliver irrigation technology in the Cerrado region of Brazil, where farmers are expected to benefit from a more conscious use of water, optimizing resources, nutrients, and inputs, achieving optimal yield and land use potential with less water per ton.
“We are also working to help farmers not only from a water management point of view, but we have innovations in development [featuring] the element of water much more prominently,” Tedeschi says. “We are looking at seed varieties with higher tolerance to drought, but also at chemicals that can be applied with a much wider window of application, so that no matter what the conditions are you don’t need to get that one day of perfect weather in order to make your fungicide or insecticide application. You can have a wider window due to protective and curative activity, and a formulation which allows for more flexibility. It is a topic which goes into our entire development philosophy.”Tedeschi adds, “We don’t want to have a debate on climate change, but what we know is that farmers all over the world have to deal with much more volatile weather conditions and we want to support them with any part of our innovation pipeline.”
