IRVINE, CA - Continuing its advocacy for California's water supply, Western Growers (WG) has used its platform to elevate industry voices in the latest episode of the Voices of the Valley podcast. Dennis Donohue, Director of WG's Center for Innovation & Technology and Candace Wilson, Chief Executive Officer of GreenVenus sat down with Team Leader Agronomy West at Netafim USA Domonic Rossini to discuss the state of the issue as well as misconceptions about agricultural water usage.

"Unfortunately, in the state of California and a lot of places, we like to do things drastically," Rossini said. "For a long time, we ignored the environment—it's fine, we can cut down all the trees, we can kill all the buffalo, and we can use as much water as we want. And now, there's been a big shift where we went from that to, now we can't do anything for any people, we have to do everything for wildlife. We're going to have to do somewhere in the middle. We're going to have to have a balance."

A press release outlined that Netafim provides data and science around precision water usage to growers. A key aspect of the operation is that the growers can then tell their honest, fact-based stories to educate the public.

"It doesn't make news if you're doing something good," he said. "The news loves to promote challenges...farmers as a whole are out working. They're busy. They can't sit in the political realm and say 'Please listen to us, we're out here trying to do this.' [But], we need to have better stories out there of what we can do."

Rossini's insights may even spur your own ideas, so be sure to check out the episode linked above. We at ANUK will continue bringing you updates from voices across the industry.

Western Growers Netafim