Commodity Agricultural use not generally viable
Commodity Agricultural use not generally viable
Most farmers in the USA are paying less than $200 per acre foot and even in California the quoted cost viability limit seems to be around $800 per acre foot when growing premium crops such as citrus and almonds.
The lowest we think A2WH can ever reach without fundamental technology improvement is about $0.02 USD per gallon and that is only when selling multiple 50 million gallon per day systems. At $0.02 USD per gallon it still represents a cost much greater than is normally tolerable for commdity agriculture such as rice, wheat or corn.
There are exceptions where especially for high value crops like citrus where a small amount of high purity water can be used to desalinate root zones which can triple production. It can also be viable to keep expensive infrastructure crops alive during drought such as almond groves which are expensive to replant.
Grow Dryland puts Desertified land back to work
We have developed Grow Dryland which leverages a small amount of water to grow high value trees on dry land where no agriculture water is availble. Since Grow dryland allows otherwise desertified, idle or degraded land to be made productive it represents a special case.
Reduce Imported Food in Dubai
More recently we performed a study of using Air Solar Water to support high efficiency growth of tomatoes and other high value crops in Dubai. The economics of this approach appear viable but Dubai offers a special condition where farmers retain a higher portion of the gross proceeds from the crop than they do in the USA. This higher value retained by the grower could make it feasible for A2WH to help Saudi Arabia and Dubai drastically reduce their dependency on imported food.
Special case where Water is needed to sustain economic growth
We have been in contact with a USA state that is running a 3 million acre foot per year deficit and the system seems to pay for it’s self there simply because it’s allows continued economic growth where they may be forced to start to restrict growth. In this instance any impact of economic growth greater than 2% is enough to pay for the system. In this instance a majority of the economic growth impact is driven by residential construction and light industry not agriculture.
Thanks Joe Ellsworth
