When people think about the water they use, they tend to think of the water that comes out of the tap and the daily shower. But with roughly 70% of the water we use going to grow food, and that number rising to 90% in low-income countries, securing water for other uses can be tricky.
But in many areas, farmers are encouraged to use only as much water as they think they'll need, sometimes overusing it to ensure a good crop. “Governments want to produce their own food; they don't want water to be expensive,” Kilimo co-founder and CEO Jairo Trad told TechCrunch.
“But if farmers don't irrigate, there's a big risk they'll produce less, make less money and lose even more food,” he added. “The risks are disproportionate.”
Cheap irrigation has transformed much of the world into grain belts, but it also means that little water is left for other uses.
For businesses, water shortages can be an existential threat. “If you have a $1 million or $200 million bottling plant, if you don't have water next week, that's a lot of money at risk,” Tradd says. “So we started talking to people and trying to make water more valuable.”
What Trad and his colleagues at Kilimo have come up with is best thought of as a risk-management tool. So far, the company has taken around 100,000 soil samples from 45 different crops in various countries, mostly in South America. From there, the company uses those samples to combine soil moisture with satellite images of farmland, which are much more readily available.
“You need to sit close to the ground to understand how things work in a particular country, on particular soil,” Tradd said.
Kilimo can remotely monitor farms and advise farmers on water usage. Farmers are charged a service fee, and if they are successful in reducing their water usage, Kilimo sells the excess water to companies in the same basin that need it and gives a share of the revenue to the farmer. In the end, farmers who reduce their water usage receive 20 to 40 percent more than they paid Kilimo. All of this is verified by a third party according to volumetric water charge standards.
The startup is about 10 years old, but it's been working to expand as water scarcity rises to the top of management's concerns. It currently operates across South America, including Argentina and Mexico, where it's based. The Southwestern U.S. and Europe are next up. To support its growth, Kilimo recently raised $7.5 million in Series A funding, which the company shared exclusively with TechCrunch. The round was led by Emerald Technology Ventures, with participation from iThink VC, Kamay Ventures, Salkantay Ventures and The Yield Lab Latam.
Kilimo is working with Microsoft, Intel and Coca-Cola, which have all issued water pledges. (Data centers use a lot of water, as do beverages.) Trad hopes to strike deals with more companies. “Each company alone won't make a difference, but if you can harness the power of companies, governments and development banks, that's when change starts to happen,” he said.