Water savings are the top driver in drip irrigation, but Tate Kelley says growers also want to cut fertilizer costs, and the technology is following. Kelley, a Product Manager at Netafim, travels the U.S. and Canada to work with growers and dealers, and he says the interest in drip is growing in Arizona, New Mexico and the Pacific Northwest.
As he discusses with brand leader Margy Eckelkamp, he points to more uniform crops, satellite imaging and automation that reduces on-farm labor as the changes that matter most.
Margy: You cover a wide geography, but share a little bit more about your role at Netafim and the work you do.
Tate: I came over here in sales from a territory, and it changed dramatically when I got here. Product manager, really the way I like to say it is, the mend between the field and the factory, whether that’s through our sales team, or whether that’s through the grower to the factory making changes. Most of my time is traveling in territory with our sales team, meeting customers and our dealers. I count our customers as both the grower and the dealer.
Margy: Let’s surface some of those trends that you see as the repeated feedback you get from your customers, whether it’s farmers or dealers.
Tate: We would always like to hear that we’re doing a great job. That is not always the case. There’s always some tweaks, specifically on the product itself. One of the things I like to do is ask what can we do better and what have we done well in the past when you’re buying our products. Netafim being number one as a dripper line, but really branching into all things irrigation now, including agronomy, we’re really looking for feedback.
So the first thing that comes to my mind is flushing techniques. I’ve been out with our agronomists multiple times to go over flushing techniques with the grower. Very happy to get training on farm with their guys. Usually leads to good results in the field.
Margy: When it comes to irrigation, what is the driving force in this subsector of the industry right now?
Tate: I think water savings, right, is the number one, but I think we forget about something which is the fertilizer side. Water is always very important. Colorado, Imperial Desert comes to mind, Yuma comes to mind, Arizona as a whole, really. But really, the fertilizer, the costs have skyrocketed. I don’t have the numbers off the top of my head, but they have gone up substantially. And we do a good job training the growers, but also the grower training us on what they use and why they use it, and how to inject that through our drip line to hit that root zone. Saving on fertilizer, and you’re also reducing the leach out of that fertilizer in field.
Margy: When you aren’t accustomed to drip tape irrigation, you really think about it in a specialty application, but you’ve got folks across the US and Canada using it. Are there geographies that you would highlight that are seeing great benefits in this type of application tool?
Tate: My old territory, the Central Coast, is the number one, but they’ve been using drip irrigation for some time. New markets really are Arizona, New Mexico. We’ve grown substantially there. With the Colorado River, it’s all the more important to save water and fertilizer, as they noted before. Pacific Northwest is another huge opportunity for us. And honestly, I just traveled to British Columbia, and you figure they have plenty of water up there. There’s a lot of water hazards up there that we can reach out to, and these growers are using drip irrigation for that exact reason.
Margy: Let’s talk technology. How are you layering on, whether it be technology tools or technology-driven insights, with your irrigation systems?
Tate: I think drip irrigation is oversaturated. I think I can be completely honest about that. We’ve had a lot of competitors that have been here for a long time, some as long as us or nearly as much. So new technology is important. New technologies bringing forward specifically on uniformity improvements. A good example of this would be our Orion dripper that’s coming out. Pressure compensating. All that means is as you increase pressure, your outflow of that dripper is going to remain the same. And you’re looking for a more uniform crop, higher yields across that.
So new technologies, as far as drip irrigation goes, they’re few and far between. So when you get something like an Orion dripper, or a Uniram hybrid dripper, pretty important to the industry, and that’s really where the technology comes. If I may, I would say also the technology that includes imaging, or uniformity imaging from satellites, including with labor savings, on-farm labor savings, that really reduce any use of a grower or one of the employees going to a field and opening a valve. Any automation that you could do is super helpful. Those are the two that come to mind.
Margy: Are there also systems that you guys are developing to help growers with troubleshooting, uncovering some problems in the field more quickly or more efficiently?
Tate: I would say so. I think, sadly, a lot of the troubleshooting has to be hands on. It really comes down to maintenance. Whether that’s winterizing, whether that’s flushing your system, as I alluded to before, really, that does require hands-on experience. Those guys are out there anyway, so they’re doing it.
As far as automation goes, a lot of our automation is connected to water meters. When you see a drop off of flow, you know something’s going on in the field. And so there is pings on your phone that you can look at at all times, even when you’re on vacation, and go ahead and tell your guys to go out there. So the automation is an interesting sector. I think we all have a long way to go on this front, but Netafim, I would argue is the leader. I’ve seen the technology work there.
Margy: The catalyst for our conversation and having you come on the podcast was you being named 40 Under 40, so congratulations. What would be some words that you would share with others who might be in the beginning chapters of their career in the greater ag retail industry?
Tate: Such an honor to be 40 Under 40, a surprise to me as well. It was pretty cool to come out to have our marketing team present that to me. But I think something I learned early in my career was, listen first. It’s really fun to have all the answers when you’re in the field. Being young, being old, it really doesn’t matter. To have an answer is, I don’t know, confidence building. And the problem is you don’t have all the answers, and I think it’s okay to say that and come back with the correct answer after, even a day or even a week.
So listen first, and then talk second. I think I was just riding with one of our salesmen, and he was told early in his career, you have two ears and one mouth for a reason. So, listen twice as much as you talk.
