[00:00:22] Bridget: I'm pleased to welcome Nick Brozovic to the Water Resources podcast. Nick is the Director of Policy at the University of Nebraska's Daugherty Water for Food Global Institute and is also a Professor of Agricultural Economics at the University of Nebraska at Lincoln. Nick has over 20 years of international experience working on policy, agricultural technologies and entrepreneurship issues related to water and agriculture.
And today, Nick, I think we're going to focus on your research on smallholder irrigation, agricultural water entrepreneurship, collaboration with ag tech incubator companies, and economic analysis, focusing primarily on sub-Saharan African countries. So thank you, Nick, for joining me. I really appreciate it.
[00:01:14] Nick: Thank you, Bridget. It's a pleasure to join you.
[00:01:17] Bridget: So Nick, you work at the Daugherty Water for Food Global Institute and, I attended their annual meeting in 2012, so was, barely starting and I was extremely impressed with the topics that were covered. the groups that were attending and everything. And so maybe you can describe a little bit about how that organization started and how it has been evolving, over time.
[00:01:42] Nick: Thank you, Bridget. So the Daugherty Water for Food Global Institute started in 2010, and it started at the University of Nebraska. I should provide first a little bit of background about the institute and its name. So maybe some of your listeners and viewers know the importance of irrigation to Nebraska, but certainly some don't.
So within Nebraska, we currently have nine million irrigated acres off cropland. So that's the largest irrigated area of any state in the U. S. It's more than Egypt more than Australia. So irrigation is very important to the state and in fact, in particular, the center pivot irrigation industry was founded and commercialized in Nebraska.
So, Nebraska is the headquarters for Valmont, which is the world's largest irrigation company. As well as for several of the other largest irrigation companies in the world, including Lindsey and Ranky and TNL. And if any of you that have flown across the country know, you may not realize you're looking at center pivot irrigation, but you see the cropcircles from airplanes.
That's the center pivot irrigation. And so irrigation and technology and the use of technology to support food security has been very important to the state's development. Sometime a little bit over, 15 years ago, the founder of Valmont, who was Robert Daugherty, decided that he would like to put some of the money from his personal foundation into an institute that would work on a topic that was close to his heart, which is namely how food security and water security were integrated.
And so he gave a gift to the University of Nebraska system to establish an institute. Which is the Daugherty Water for Food Global Institute, whose mission would be to achieve a lasting and significant impact around, more food security with less pressure on scarce water resources. So that's kind of the mission statement.
Now, how we describe that and what that does , is itself of interest. We're a little bit different to most University based research institutes in several ways. So at the moment, we are the only university based research institute that spans by design from smallholder and subsistence irrigation right up to very, very large corporate and highly technologically advanced farms.
And by design, we're intended to work across all the context in which irrigation happens and to span between them and to transfer knowledge in all directions. Between them, so that's 1 thing that's different.
Another thing that's different is by design. We are encouraged to work very closely with external collaborators, both within,government sectors, non governmental sectors, and in particular with private industry.
And so many of the projects and programs that we have to have external partners. again, how I describe it is, I think that, we can think of the institute is having a duality of mission. 1 is kind of thought leadership in research related to food and water security. That's a fairly standard university based research framing. so we work with. currently about 130 faculty fellows across the University of Nebraska system. through them, we fund at any given time around 40 graduate students who work on mission related topics. we undertake scientific and policy research. We engage with various, stakeholders who have interests in food and water security.
It includes policy makers. It includes industry. It includes investors. it includes environmental groups, so it's a very broad group there, and we share knowledge and catalyze change.
The second mission is more of this, boots on the ground impact, and that is one that is, again, relatively unusual for a university based institute. It's one of the things that makes my job particularly interesting, maybe a little bit harder. and we generally aren't implemented, so currently we have about 30 full time staff. At the Institute. Most of us are based in Lincoln, Nebraska. We have a few research teams that are positioned elsewhere, and we typically as a result of that.
We're not implementers. You know, we don't have hundreds of personnel. But our mode of operation is often to, convene and catalyze change and facilitate interactions between groups that do have the power. To work as implementers. Let me pause for a minute there. I'll continue, but perhaps you have a follow up question there.
[00:06:41] Bridget: Well, I mean, irrigation gets a lot of negative press these days, because of, overexploitation of groundwater and, these sorts of things. But, Nebraska is actually, when we did analysis of, water storage in the High Plains Aquifer, which Nebraska is part of. Nebraska was not showing, much depletion, maybe in the southwest, but it's, it looked fairly stable, was responding to climate, and you've got the Nebraska Sandhills that recharge the aquifer. And so, it's not the same as the central and southern high plains in Kansas and Texas, where we have, very old, water that was recharged thousands of years ago. And that is. being mined. So I think it's important for listeners to understand that also. And, irrigation helps us get through droughts and, have stable food security, during climate extremes.
it's not always all negative. And so Nebraska is a good example. And the U. S. Geological Survey has been monitoring groundwater there since the 1980s. And so you can see from their data then that it has remained fairly stable, over time. I mean, it goes up and down, but, overall there's no big negative depletion.
[00:07:53] Nick: Right, Bridget. I'm glad you brought that up. And in fact, I've shared some of your reports very extensively and bring them up and actually. I'll show your figures quite often. So thank you for those. irrigation is fascinating and groundwater within irrigation is also fascinating because it's subject to so many misconceptions. and, that's one of the misconceptions here is this whole, the High Plains aquifer, the Ogallala aquifer is drying up and in five years, it will be gone. And this is a story that we hear regularly.and in some cases and places, there is no doubt that you're managing exit of irrigation back to a dry land setting.
And there the policy question is, how do you buffer the local communities from those impacts? How do you extend the life? as you mentioned in Nebraska, we're very fortunate that we have very high recharge rates. we have very large rivers and snowmelt from the Rockies. the sand hills , a great source of recharge for the state and that over time, the aquifer has been very, very stable and that allows a, quite robust agricultural economy to develop.
If you want food security, you have to irrigate, and that irrigation is really one of the main, climate change mitigation and adaptation mechanisms. And that, this comes out very clearly from crop yield data.
If you don't irrigate, you, you are subject to very large fluctuations in crop yields. And if you look at where globally, high value agriculture exists in many of those locations. It's supported by irrigation. And so irrigation comes with tradeoffs. It does come with tradeoffs, and we have to acknowledge those, and we have to acknowledge that there are public health consequences of agricultural production, that there are environmental consequences, that there are social and cultural values of water that have to be taken into account.
But that fundamentally, food security is, is really underpinned by irrigation.
[00:09:57] Bridget: Right. And, it's really great that, Robert Daugherty initiated this, foundation at the university to help with, food security and that you're doing a lot of work in, in developing countries in, Sub Saharan Africa and other regions. Your title at the Water for Food Institute is Director of Policy.
And I was wondering if you could describe a little bit about what that involves and what you're working on.
[00:10:23] Nick: Yeah. As, as you mentioned, my title is director of policy, my academic background, I'm an agricultural economist for most of my academic career. Before that, I was actually a geologist. So I have an undergraduate and a master's degree in geology and then switched into agricultural economics, which is one of the reasons why I do a lot of work at this intersection of water and economics. The title director of policy is, something that I find very liberating because it means many different things to different people. And so it allows me to operate, with a very kind of wide set of modalities. And so a lot of my work is this at this intersection of economic and policy analysis. And, technology and research around technology and entrepreneurship. And so I found it a very interesting title. It lets me work with students. I do teach, I work with a lot of young people, both within the Institute and elsewhere. So there is that capacity building and engagement role. I don't think I have two projects that are the same, Bridget.
It's, it's actually one of the things I love about my work is that every day is different. And I may be at the edge of the field talking to a subsistence farmer who's on on a 10th of an acre and using a watering can to irrigate his or her field, or I may be talking to the CEO of a fortune 500 company or a minister about groundwater policy or visiting, a potato operation in Idaho and everything in between.
And I, I didn't grow up on a farm. I don't have an agricultural background. So I, I'm a lifelong learner. I consider it a wonderful opportunity. To learn.
[00:12:02] Bridget: That's great that you're covering so many bases. And of course, I really enjoy working with economists because at the, base of most things is economics. And that's what's a big driver of the behavior that we see in agriculture and water. And,there's also this sort of,global mantra that we're running out of water but, the World Bank had a report,last year, titled The Hidden Wealth of Nations, groundwater's Critical Role, indicating that in Sub-Saharan Africa, that, Groundwater and irrigation was underdeveloped in sub Saharan Africa. I think,NGOs and funding agencies may be misled to thinking that,they shouldn't support some of this work because of unsustainable practices, but actually, sub Saharan Africa would benefit greatly, if they would expand irrigation in many of these countries.
[00:12:52] Nick: Yeah, but that's right. so we'll come to the sub Saharan Africa in particular. But yes, Irrigation as a whole is underdeveloped and across much of the region, there is the potential to increase irrigation significantly. But beyond that, specifically groundwater Is underdeveloped and many of the countries and regions within the countries, seem to have the opportunity to expand groundwater significantly in a way that can be sustained in the long term. One of the things I personally love about working on water is that it's all localized. You know, the location and the timing of water use are critical to understanding its value. One of the questions I get from policymakers all the time. is, well, tell me what is the value of this water?and that's,a very simple question that has a very hard answer because the answer is always, it depends.
The same water, the value of it is gonna really vary even in one place across time. and that it, you can't really give one number, even though from a policy perspective, sometimes we want to give one number, and that in some cases, it may even be that increasing water use for agriculture is good, both economically and environmentally.
So when we look at some of the things that are happening around, recharge and the understanding of, for instance, rice cropping in some areas of the world, where you also have significant groundwater recharge, where you have a migratory bird habitat. Linked to paddy rice production. Those things are, very hard to capture in, a meaningful way.
I mean, you can capture the localized value, but it's hard to generalize. And then at the same time, you have the legal and the regulatory framework. So you have the complexity of water rights, you have the fact that water is, a real asset whose value is capitalized into land markets.
And, and that again, changes our thinking of how water is analyzed. It gives us a chance to. quantified value in a different way. And then you have the cultural and social values. And this is something that across much of the world, the cultural and social values of water are actually enormous. And we don't really have that with other agricultural inputs.
We don't think about the cultural value of manure or the cultural value of fertilizer, but we do, and generally we don't need to, but we do need to think about the cultural value of the salmon in the river where you have, indigenous fishing and have had those rights for hundreds of years, or the value of the spring that many generations of a community have had access to for recreation purposes.
So these are questions that complicate water use.
[00:15:40] Bridget: Yeah, and so you bring up a couple of important points. I mean, the value of water. I mean, you can see in the Central Valley when they're in the long-term drought multi year drought, the price of water escalates and huge increase in the water pricing. And so I think that shows you how the value of water changes with the situation.
So we need to consider those things. so you do, a lot of work in, Sub Saharan Africa. And it's, it's really nice to hear that you're a geologist. I'm a geologist also.we're focusing, focused later on water issues. So when you look at the World Bank report, they talk a lot about the different aquifers in the region, and many of them are on basement rock.
So they're very thin aquifers, maybe 20, 30 meters. And so they're just eroded basement rock. And so they're thin and, they could supply enough water for a smallholder farmer. And when we talk about overexploitation of aquifers, we're oftentimes thinking about large, thick aquifers like the Nubian Sandstone or the Indo Gangetic Plain.
But when you're thinking about these small basement related aquifers, there's not much water to begin with, and so there's really nothing to overexploit. They quickly see the impacts of what they are doing, so they're sort of self regulated. And so I think you're doing a lot of work in these regions trying to expand, smallholder irrigation.
It seems like it's a very challenging thing to do because changing people's behavior is very difficult. If they're used to doing one thing, then it's very difficult to change them. We all hear about what it's like to quit smoking or something like that, so maybe you can describe a little bit smallholder irrigation in Sub Saharan Africa and what you're doing to try to expand, irrigation in those regions.
[00:17:35] Nick: yes. And I just want to touch on something that you mentioned before we get to the Sub-Saharan piece, which is the self governing piece, which is really that groundwater governance, as you know, is a huge issue. And it's something that many of us work a lot on and do comparative studies on.
Groundwater governance is a particular challenge for smallholders. One of the keys to effective groundwater governance is having multigenerational farming operations, where a real motivation to build the trust needed for governance is that the farmer and the landowners want their children, and in particular their grandchildren, to be able to sustain the same kind of life that the current generation has. And this is something that I mean, I hear across the U. S. West and another context, and that is really the motivation for often for the willingness to consider changes in behavior to curtail water use today in order to preserve something for future generations, and that's still a complicated conversation, but there's a way in.
When you get into a smallholder context, the goal of many smallholders is for their children not to be farmers. But rather to move away from farming and into the city and it's very hard to fault that. I mean, when you look at the economics of smallholder agriculture, it's very hard to fault it.
And so that creates, some challenges. I mean, also, You look at the numbers involved in governance and so it's possible to set up institutions with hundreds to low thousands of people that are self governing and that you can build the institutional structure for monitoring and enforcement that's local.
And that works when your individual farmers have thousands or tens of thousands of acres. But, in a South Asian or a Sub Saharan context where you're dealing with institutions that would have to cover hundreds of thousands of farmers. To cover a meaningful area above an aquifer within a river basin, governance becomes really, really hard.
This is one of the challenges of rolling out solar irrigation equipment. And one of the things, you know, if you look at India, which has been relatively successful in rolling out solar irrigation and, on the one hand, that's wonderful to see. On the other hand, solar irrigation brings the marginal cost of pumping to zero.
And once you give somebody a solar irrigation system, there's really very little motivation for them to ever turn it off. And so successful at scale rollout of solar irrigation often involves an inbuilt governance problem, and that is exacerbated in, in a smallholder setting. So, so this is something that we certainly worked on, Soumya Balasubramanya at the World Bank, published,an editorial in, in Science that several of us from the Institute were involved with that frames these issues very, very well.
[00:20:32] Bridget: So, I mean, when you talk about these small aquifers, these regolith aquifers on top of basement, there really is not that much water to work with. So you'll see seasonal changes, with recharge and then pumping. And so even if they had, maybe many of them are hand pumps or are things like that. but there's not that much water to deplete and they quickly see. It's almost like a karst system they're dynamic and they're responding to very recent things. So similar geology, I think in Peninsular India.
[00:21:05] Nick: That's right. Yeah. Yeah. And the hard rock systems.
[00:21:07] Bridget: right, right. And so we're not talking about big, thick aquifers then, so I think, they're almost self regulating, I think.
And I'm not sure that they need solar systems. to operate because there's just not that much water. So you, you have many projects in Sub Saharan Africa. Maybe you could describe some of those, Nick, and also the different geographies, the different contexts that you're dealing with.
[00:21:35] Nick: Perfect. Yeah, thank you. Bridget. So, so 1 of the Institute's current kind of larger strategic themes is the, smallholder agricultural water management, which runs across kind of the spectrum from rain fed systems to fully irrigated systems. And this is actually a thing that. That we should come back within that in that a lot of the value of irrigation doesn't come in very arid systems, but in systems where irrigation is supplemental. and so that's the thing that certainly challenges a number of the international organizations. for example, when you look at the FAO's definition of irrigation. Irrigation is permanently installed equipment.and when you look at how smallholders actually irrigate, almost none of it is permanently installed.
And so there's, there is this kind of scale and behavioral mismatch there that, that is interesting.and in particular, a lot of the potential for irrigation is in places where you are providing supplemental irrigation. When you look at the impact of climate change in sub Saharan Africa, one of the things the impacts that are already being seen is that the wet season is getting less wet.
And in particular, you're losing rainfall or you're not getting the rainfall that you need at the time that you'd normally have germination. And that is challenging a lot of agricultural systems and leading to the adoption of of irrigation.
So the Institute, we have multiple kind of small holder link projects. It's one of our core themes, most of our work has been in Sub Saharan Africa, although we do have some engagement in South Asia and India, Nepal, and we also have some engagement with small holder systems in South America, in multiple countries, historically, mostly in Brazil, but now also in several other countries.
so I think I'll mention two projects. One because I'm involved with them and so I'm more familiar with them. So we've been working with the International Fund for Agricultural Development for the last couple of years. On a project that is based in Rwanda, but works in several other countries and in sub Saharan Africa. And the framing there is really looking, with a business lens at how small holders access irrigation.
So, again, as I mentioned, we're not implementers. We don't have the capacity to deploy. very large monitoring and evaluation teams or very large field campaigns, with farmers on the ground. And so the approach that we've taken is to try to understand the people that are providing irrigation products and services to farmers and understand their supply chains, understand the constraints that they have, the issues that they face.
So this is people like the pump dealers and the distributors at a class of entrepreneurs that provide irrigation goods and services to farmers as well. And I'll say that that's a group that is generally not studied. I mean, that's also true in the US is that we typically don't go and talk to I'll say the Institute does, but you typically don't think about irrigation dealers as being a quite critical in the larger ecosystem of how farmers get irrigation advice and get irrigation equipment, but they turn out to be exceptionally important.
And in particular, the private sector is important because we're in this longer-term trend that historically a lot of the irrigation investment was public sector. And again, that I think was true in much of the US West. It's certainly been true. In a global south setting, but we're now moving to a framework where much of the irrigation investment is privately funded and private decision making.
And so that changes the set of actors that you have to interact with the supply chains, the decisions, the interaction with policy. And so the Institute over time, we've been building up expertise. In terms of engaging with various actors in the private sector around irrigation provision.and so within that project, both generally within the Institute and then specifically within the, the project, we've been looking at the business models that are used to provide irrigation services to farmers. And it turns out that it's actually a very fun area of research, because the way that smallholders get irrigation are very varied. We might just think about a farmer buys a pump and that's, that's one business model, but there are many, many, many other models with both informal rentals and, an increasing number of irrigation of the service business models where the farmers never own equipment.
And there are some very good reasons why in some context, those are of interest. Particularly because there's often a, in a smallholder setting, there is a gender bias to equipment ownership. And so there is now growing interest in this set of solutions that are known as irrigation as a service where farmers access irrigation, but they don't actually own the underlying equipment.
More recently, we know, as of last year, we have a much larger project, which is one of the USAID Feed the Future Innovation Labs. So, the Dougherty Water for Food Global Institute and the University of Nebraska The Innovation Lab for irrigation and mechanization systems. The acronym is ILIMS. and so ILIMS is a large, US government supported, research and capacity development program that is focused on, supporting the mechanized systems for irrigation and other agricultural services, for small holders. The geography of that program is, It's actually global. So there there are sites within sub Saharan Africa. So within sub Saharan Africa, we work in Ghana, Niger, Ethiopia and Rwanda. But within South Asia, we work in Nepal. Within Latin America, there's Guatemala and Honduras, and we anticipate further countries. Now, all the countries have to be, Feed the Future countries. Which are countries that are, of particular importance to the U. S. government for the purposes of, achieving U. S. global food security strategy and sustainable development goals. That lab is initially a five year project, but it is extendable into more years. Nicole LeFore for who is the director of that lab is one of the leadership team at the Institute. She's fantastic. She, has lived and worked several decades in sub Saharan Africa and is an incredible, facilitator and researcher.
And so that project is a particular mechanism to produce research-based solutions to inform both USAID about its programs, but also to inform development banks and other agencies about how they should think about solutions for smallholders. So it funds applied research, including through university partnerships.
I mean, it's particularly interested in partnerships between U. S. universities. Local universities and Feed the Future countries and private sector. And the goal is to essentially localize solutions to agricultural water management and agricultural problems more generally in a way that provides inputs to policies, directly benefits the target countries, strengthens market opportunities, and then builds capacity for future water and future agricultural leaders. There's a particular focus within the mechanism to reach women, marginalized and minority groups and youth, which requires a particular set of approaches and skills. And again, we have partners with long expertise of doing that.
I'll also say that most of the funding in that lab, you can think of it as a pass through. So the university gets the money and most of the money is then passed out mostly through competitive proposals. So if there are listeners and viewers that are interested in, doing that kind of work, the lab will have multiple rounds of RFAs to build partnerships to do applied research across, the target countries. And again, if anybody wants to, they're welcome to, to reach out to me or to Nicole or to look on our website for more information.
[00:30:14] Bridget: Right, right. So, that is a very interesting, how things have evolved, over the years in terms of irrigation to agriculture. So, we've been talking with the Grundfos, which, provides, solar pumps and, and they also have a foundation and they work with NGOs. I know they work with Water Mission in Ethiopia and Kenya.
So I think that's kind of an example of,these, private companies, helping, with these programs. And also, another colleague, Paul Bauman, who, works with refugee camps. he works a lot with Isra Aid, and I guess they, help with, irrigation systems and agriculture.
And so, It's very important for the U. S. to, help, ensure food security in these countries because, is it mostly, irrigating to grow crops in the dry season, or is it, to get through droughts? I mean, Chris Funk talked about long term droughts in the Horn of Africa over several seasons, or is it both? And what type of, crops are they growing, in these regions?
[00:31:16] Nick: So you're asking great questions and I don't think there's one answer and the answers are often contentious. So the goal is to increase the nutritional security and income of smallholder farmers. Now, there are multiple pathways to that goal. My understanding of some of the latest research is that at least in some contexts, the clearest pathways for farmers to grow, produce that is integrated into higher value markets and value chains, and then take the money and use that to buy more nutritious food. And many of these systems, are multi cropping season. So you may grow cereals in one season, and then you may grow vegetables and, in another when you look at the demand for irrigation, you mentioned irrigating in the dry season, but increasingly a lot of the irrigation that's happening is, in the wet season because the rain is becoming more variable in the wet season.
One of the Interesting things that we've seen in Rwanda. So Rwanda is a country that we've, we've worked for a number of years and the university has some strong historical links to Rwanda. So, it's relatively easy for us to work there because we have a lot of our university students that are now graduates and are Rwandan citizens. and one of the things that we find is that a lot of people, When they start irrigating, they start irrigating in the wet season, and it doesn't occur to them that they can irrigate in the dry season.
And so there is an opportunity for capacity building there. And even some of the largest schemes, you'll find people that irrigate in the wet season, but culturally, you don't grow anything in the dry season. And so.they don't do that, even though from an income perspective, that's a time when you can grow, it's a short season, but you can grow, things ideally for export.
And,you have chilies and you have green beans and you have these products that are quite high value, particularly when you can export them, for example, to Europe.
[00:33:22] Bridget: So in order to, support irrigation, then you need to be growing maybe higher value products. And so maybe horticultural, agriculture and maybe supplying nearby towns and cities. Access to market is a big part of that. And you mentioned earlier, this supplemental irrigation. I think when I used to do work on biofuels in Brazil many years ago, they called it salvation irrigation or something to that effect.
so, and, and in the US, I think many years ago when I was talking with people at the US Geological Survey who were monitoring, water, and water use, they, they found that in the Southeast that banks were requiring farmers to establish irrigation so that they would have secure production and be able to pay off their loans. So a lot of factors impact what people do and what is required.
So, you mentioned. Yeah, the wet seaspn not being as wet. I think we had Chris Funk on the podcast earlier. And I guess is it the March, April, May season in the Horn of Africa? The rain is not as much as it was traditionally or, is decreasing?
[00:34:32] Nick: I mean, that would be one way of looking at again where the wet and the dry seasons even vary across the region. So that's it's hard to generalize there. But you typically have one dry season and two wet seasons.
[00:34:44] Bridget: Right.
[00:34:45] Nick: I want to come back to something that you said there, because I think it's really important to think about the finance.
And one of the things that we look at a lot is, the capacity of the agricultural production systems to cover the expense of the irrigation system. So one thing that is typically not appreciated is that it's generally more expensive to put in irrigation systems in sub Saharan Africa than it is somewhere like in the US. And just because the supply chains are very, very long, maintenance and repairs tend to be very expensive. Finding spare parts is, is, is a very tough proposition. And so one of the challenges that we see, particularly when we look at a lot of the older schemes, is that they were, built with very good intentions, and very high tech equipment, and then the capacity of the system to generate enough essentially cash to put aside against depreciation isn't there.
And so if you want to maintain a system for the long term, essentially you have to put aside money to cover not just the repairs, but the longer-term depreciation so that you can replace it. And agriculture is a harsh environment everywhere.
[00:36:05] Bridget: And I guess when you mentioned earlier, the different ways to finance things. So a lot of farmers are leasing the equipment and never own it because I guess the capital costs, the initial capital costs are quite high. And so if you can lease it, then you can avoid that, but you can still access the equipment.
And then maybe if you're leasing it, maybe the companies that are leasing it may also be able to repair it and have the spare parts and things like that.
[00:36:30] Nick: Exactly. So some of the challenges or some of the appeal of irrigation as a service is exactly that, but somebody else manages the repairs and the maintenance and deals with the depreciation in, much of the global South security of irrigation equipment is a real concern and, you have to hire guards to protect your pumps and your solar panels.
That's a real expense. If you're leasing, that's kind of often not your problem. And so then that's another thing that is, useful and increasingly one of the things we're seeing around irrigation as a service is that sometimes it's not even the farmer that is paying for the irrigation equipment, but it might be the offtaker.
In other words, the person that is buying the produce from the farmer, it's in their interest for the farmers to have high quality, high yielding produce and the gains are enough that they are willing to pay for that, on behalf of the farmer. So again, from my perspective, that offers up some very interesting business and economic arrangements. So that's the kind of thing that we've been trying to study.
[00:37:42] Bridget: And you mentioned that you've been working a lot in Rwanda and you have ties there and everything, but worked in many different countries in Sub Saharan Africa. And I guess the difference between Sub Saharan Africa and India is that, Sub Saharan Africa imports everything whereas India, maybe they, they develop and they have more technology in country. And, and so maybe better access to equipment and things like that to, to do irrigation. and you mentioned the supply chains. I mean, maybe.
[00:38:09] Nick: That's right.
[00:38:10] Bridget: Coming from. Yeah. So a lot of differences there. So differences among countries in Sub-Saharan Africa. Do you see a lot of differences?
[00:38:17] Nick: Yes. I mean, again, I'll even leave aside the hydrological and climatic differences, but institutionally. There are very large differences. So one of the things, as I mentioned, we work in Rwanda a lot. Rwanda is an incredibly safe country, and there is a, very clear, high level of integrity among government services.
There's no visible corruption, and so in, in many ways, it's actually very easy to work there because, you, you don't end up tripping over yourself whenever you want to try to get things done. And the government itself is very innovative, but they are very happy to try new programs, and learn from both what works and what doesn't.
In other countries, it's a lot harder to operate. And again, many of these countries are either actively in conflict or fragile, and so that, for one thing, that creates a difficulty in working there, but it also creates difficulty in how, private companies operate. and so those are things that, those institutional, contexts really make a big difference.
I mean, you mentioned the contrast between India and sub Saharan Africa, that again, even if climatically they're the same, India is so much larger in terms of the different kinds of value chains that are established, the number of companies.. I mean, India has larger irrigated acreage than anywhere else in the world, there's a lot of local manufacturing, I mentioned I work a lot with startups, And, one of the things that I love about India is that the level of both technical and business model innovation, is is just phenomenal.
So you can look at any kind of ag tech startup in the U. S. And there's a company in India that almost certainly doing the same thing, but somewhere between 10 and 50 times cheaper and part of the kind of the spillover from the, tech explosion in in southern India is that you have a fairly large cohort of company founders that started software companies and they have one or two successful exits. And now that they're looking for the thing that they want to do for the next decade, and they settle on agriculture is the thing that they want to make an impact in. And so the set of, connections and facility with technology that they bring, they may not know very much about farming, but they understand technology and business at a very, very high level.
And so I find the conversations with a lot of those tech companies and founders very invigorating because, yeah, they were already thinking about, okay, what are the standard problems we're going to have with channel marketing strategy? How do we scale? How do we build distribution networks? Who are the strategic partners that we need to work with?
And so it's a very, very interesting place to see how quickly technology evolves.
[00:41:20] Bridget: So Africa Sub-Saharan Africa would really benefit, from some of that. But you, that's not something you can turn on and off, it's, that has evolve over time. And, you mentioned, a lot of issues with conflict and, in different countries in Sub Saharan Africa and Rwanda being very safe and secure.
you're attending the World Water Week conference in Stockholm this week. And I think,the, purpose of the meeting is to, is titled Bridging Borders, Water for a Peaceful and Sustainable Future. So, how is the conference going? And, and, I guess a lot of presentations on conflict, how water can help reduce conflict or how water is impacted by conflict and these sorts of things.
[00:42:03] Nick: Yeah. So again, just for the listeners, World Water Week is probably the largest water themed meeting globally that there are usually several thousand in person attendees and many more online. It happens in Stockholm every year. This year's theme, as Bridget mentioned, is, water for a peaceful and sustainable future, bridging borders.
And so that there have been a lot of presentations here that have been focused on the role of water ing mitigating and reducing conflict. Now, in general, the conference, it's everything water. And so there's an interesting mix that includes both, urban water issues, Water and Sanitation. I'll say that agriculture and water is one of the smaller themes.
It's a very robust theme, but it's one of the smaller themes here across the water industry. And there's also a mix between people that work in the global north and people that work in the global south. So it's a great place to come and learn and interact with lots of different people with very different perspectives and experiences.
And the conversations in the corridors and the questions in the sessions end up being really, really varied. So it's a meeting that I greatly enjoy. I come out of it exhausted and invigorated. We actually had a session, the Institute co convened a session on groundwater governance in agriculture and comparative studies, across many different countries of What works for, active management of groundwater.
What are some of the policy lessons that can be transferred? I'm not presenting myself, but others are.
[00:43:40] Bridget: Right. so, and for the listeners also, you can register for the conference for free online, and you can watch the recordings and everything. So I haven't attended World Water Week, but I've often watched videos and, seen what is going on. I missed the corridor conversations, but,still can learn from the conference.
So, thank you so much, Nick, for participating in the podcast. your work is so important for increasing food and water security in Sub Saharan Africa and developing countries and I greatly appreciate what the Daugherty Water for Food Institute is doing and look forward to learning more.
So, we will put, information on the website affiliated with this, podcast and also links, to various organizations and, reports that you mentioned, for the listeners. So thank you so much and hope you enjoy the rest of the conference.
