This year marks the 90th anniversary of Rain Bird. How has the company’s vision of irrigation changed since its foundation, and what is its main focus today?
Rain Bird was born out of the invention of the original Horizontal Action Impact Sprinkler. That is what makes the iconic sound that people think of when picturing a sprinkler, and it was developed by Rain Bird in the 1930s. That technology was a way for growers in California to irrigate more efficiently… so Rain Bird was entirely born out of agriculture. Over the years we have grown into other segments, including commercial and residential landscapes and golf course irrigation, while we continue to develop new products for agriculture. Today, we are a truly global company, our products being found in 130 countries around the world.
Why are Rain Bird’s irrigation products valuable to farmers?
While we still manufacture and sell impact sprinklers, we have developed many other water-saving solutions over the years. Over the past few decades we have focused a great deal of our attention on microirrigation, which is to say drip lines and low flow sprinklers. These products deliver water more precisely and at a slower rate, generally resulting in higher yields for growers, while using water resources effectively. This is why this technology is sometimes referred to as ‘precision irrigation’.
Droughts and decreased water availability are some of the major threats which arise from climate change. What interesting innovations to address these are Rain Bird working on?
From the very beginning we have continued to innovate new products and we still invest heavily in innovation.
In the 1990s we started employing as our brand promise the notion of the ‘Intelligent Use of Water’, meaning essentially that we are centered on helping our clients put the exact amount of water needed in the exact place it is needed at the exact right time. And whether that translates into control systems or incredibly accurate drippers, we are always trying to improve. We have thousands of different products and service solutions that we offer. In other words, our entire focus is on the intelligent use of water and being part of the solution that will help our customers address issues that face us all such as water use and water conservation. Emphasizing how important this technology is, many studies have shown drip irrigation can reduce water usage by between 30 to 50%.
Additionally, on the topic of innovation, I want to highlight that we use some of the most advanced technology tools in our R&D process, like Artificial Intelligence, and Computational Fluid Dynamics to develop new products. We can now prototype, build and test virtually new designs in a matter of hours and days. In the past, this would have taken weeks or months. Our adoption of these advanced tools has really accelerated the innovation process.
How can optimized irrigation address other challenges in the industry, such as labor shortages?
One major issue in the agriculture industry today is the considerable constraints on labor. The question, therefore, is whether automation of irrigation systems can address these. Rain Bird, in fact, was an innovator of using computer power to take weather and other inputs and generate custom irrigation schedules in the 1970s.
Today, Rain Bird offers wifi and cloud-based systems that do the work for the client of taking weather and other inputs to automatically adjust irrigation schedules. The adoption rates of these types of technology, however, have been relatively slow in agriculture. I attribute this largely to the fact that different crops, grown in different geographies often require different semi-custom solutions. So there is no one “mass market” solution. Yet, I believe we are approaching the cross-over point where the value to growers of the available solutions will outweigh their cost.
On the energy front, for every unit of water there is a unit of electricity attached to it, this is called the ‘water-electricity nexus’. With the trend toward growing locally, we recognize that we need to move the water to agricultural areas. This requires electricity to pump the water. So this energy question is an important consideration as we think about where and how we grow food. Another issue in addition to water availability and getting water where it is needed is the fact that we have a finite amount of arable land. Meanwhile, we have a growing population that needs to be sustained. Therefore, we must solve the question of how to grow more with the same or fewer inputs and do so sustainably. This is why we will need to continue to innovate irrigation solutions to be able to meet those challenges.
What are your objectives for Rain Bird for the next couple of years?
Rain Bird is going to continue to innovate, develop and provide solutions that help us deliver sustainability and productivity so that we remain the leader in irrigation even 90 years from today. Generally, I would like to bring the readers’ attention to two points. First, there are already many solutions available today - like microirrigation - that must be adopted. This is crucial to conserve water and reduce waste. Second, and regarding innovation, in 1900 14% of the U.S. population was involved in agriculture, while today this figure stands at less than 2%. So we have generations of individuals today that are not at all familiar with agriculture or connected to where their food comes from. We need to attract young, diverse and ambitious individuals to solve the challenges that we face in agriculture today, and I am sure that the pace of innovation at Rain Bird will be one factor which excites and attracts that new talent.
