Netafim’s President and CEO Mike Hemman Discusses How Growers Can Respond to California’s Record Drought

Mike Hemman, President and CEO of Netafim, joins Dennis Donohue and Candace Wilson on this week’s episode of Voices of the Valley to discuss the short- and long-term strategies for adapting to the nuanced water needs growers have amid the ongoing California drought. “I think that the opportunity to deliver water in a more efficient manner has never been more important, and I believe that the growth we’re going to see in adoption towards more precise ways of irrigation is going to be huge over the next couple of decades,” Mike says. ”For me, being a native of California, it’s important to me personally to have an opportunity to do that - and from a commercial perspective, it’s a very fast-growing segment of the industry, and there’s a lot of new technology that’s coming into it.” The key to this new technology, Hemman says, is precision. “Effectively what you’re doing is taking a very small amount of water putting it exactly where the plant needs it,” Mike says. “It’s almost like an IV.”