Originally published for Marin Living Magazine.
Lumo’s Alex Johnson (left) and Josh Zoland (right) inspect a newly installed smart irrigation valve (Photo by Jaclyn San Antonio, Free Funk Photography).
It’s nothing new: California has a water problem. And although we’re the number one agricultural state in the country, this is not just a California problem, but an everyone problem. Yet, oddly enough, the ways we water our crops haven’t changed much in decades — until now.
“Climate change and population growth are forcing governments and farmers to adopt new water management technology,” says Devon Wright, CEO and founder of Lumo. “Currently, the systems that farmers are using for managing and tracking irrigation are broken and wasteful.” Lumo is here to change that. With an intuitive irrigation system, the company is taking on water waste in the agriculture industry — saving not just water, but also money, crops and time.
A few years back, Wright moved out of the city and began this venture after planting his first orchard on a property he bought in Occidental. Unaware of how much water he was wasting, he saw his well water ran dry during his first summer. He turned to his farming neighbors for a solution, asking, “Wasn’t there a technology that could automatically shut off your water, digitally display your water levels and allow you to adjust from an app?” None, zilch, nada.
This was certainly a problem that needed a solution: agriculture accounts for 70 percent of all of the world’s water use annually. Forty percent of that water is wasted each year, primarily due to poor irrigation systems and water management.
As a longtime tech-industry member (he founded Turnstyle Solutions and worked at Yelp for many years), Wright is a self-proclaimed tinkerer who knew he could build the right solution. Wright was the creator, but his neighboring farmers provided him with incomparable insight into what the product needed.
“In fact, there wouldn’t be a product without them,” says Wright, grateful for his neighbors’ willingness to collaborate. “The farming community is made up of an incredibly generous group of people who care deeply about what we give and take from the earth, so they’ll do whatever it takes to support entrepreneurs like myself to help address major issues like water scarcity.”
The result is a product years in the making that is currently rolling out to wineries (specialized just for grapes, for now) mostly in Northern California. Lumo is next-level irrigation with solar-powered wireless connection to its Smart Valve that provides flow monitoring to show when and how much water is flowing. The data reported back allows users to track water use and view it from anywhere using just a desktop or mobile phone.
The Lumo team is starting locally with North Bay farms so they can be nearby, should any issues arise with the still-new product. But they’ve already gotten interest from winery operators in far away places like New Zealand, France and Argentina — all eager to revolutionize how they water crops.
As the product becomes more widely available, Wright hopes Lumo has a ripple effect on climate change, bringing awareness to other ways we can live more sustainably. “Water gives us a chance to show people that we can make a positive impact in their community that they can see, touch and feel, and by doing so you can energize them to get really excited about sustainability in other areas.”
For now, it’s just the world in the North Bay that will change as farmers who utilize Lumo experience this dry season with more hope — and water — than ever before.