Over the past couple of decades we are witnessing severe droughts destroying over 10% of crop yields, with this number reaching a fifth in the developing countries. This loss has the greatest impact on smallholders which are unable to maintain constant crop income for their family and the market as they solely rely on rain for irrigation purposes.
This problem can be greatly alleviated by the introduction of irrigation systems, a practice still neglected in the developing countries. What’s more, the ones who do utilize these systems, tend to do so irrationally, putting in danger their crops but also water resources which are being depleted at unsustainable rate.
That is why we came up with H2Orticulture, a service that uses water, land and weather data to give any smallholder the ability to optimise the use of his resources. Just by providing the lot location and the type of crop being grown, our service delivers the closest irrigation source, water flow calculations, necessary material as well as piping distribution for optimal irrigation.
This approach to water management and crop production not only increases crop yield but also provides a more secure and sustainable process for doing so. Considering the fact that about 90% of all agricultural land is owned by smaller family farms, we believe that H2Orticulture has great potential, as the problem of irrational water use in food production industry is becoming more and more dominant.
SpaceApps is a NASA incubator innovation program.