WATER STEWARDSHIP

Limoneira's investment in cutting-edge water management technology reduces our water consumption in drought-prone environments

CLIMATE-RESILIENT AGRIBUSINESS

Limoneira has installed water management technology from  WiseConn  and  Phytech  on planted orchards, new and seasoned, to precisely deliver water without evaporative loss.

Probes on trees and in the soil allow the farming team to accurately measure water uptake efficiency to evaluate the soils:

- moisture - temperature - electrical conductivity

These probes are linked to software that provides the farming team real-time information so that trees’ stress levels are minimized and water efficiency is maximized.

"Soil moisture probes allow us to monitor how long we should be irrigating our trees. In the past, scheduling has been based on what is convenient, not what the trees require. Now, we are able to see how water is moving through the soil profile when we turn the water on and how long the water really needs to be on before it is being wasted. We can see how quick the water is getting to the bottom of the root zone and that is our indicator to turn off the water." - Myles Shoemaker, District 2 Irrigation Manager

CONSERVING CRITICAL HABITAT

In 2015, Limoneira sold a 235-acre conservation easement to the Nature Conservancy to protect riparian wetlands that borders critical habitat for the Southwestern Willow Flycatcher (Empidonax traillii extimus) (SWFC) along the Santa Clara River.

We hope the conservation area will protect native species and create biological corridors.

~100,000 gallons/day from our gravity-fed wetland water treatment plant are distributed to the conservation easement to replenish the Santa Clara River Valley Basin.

Citations

(1) Faber, B. (2015). Drought Tip: Irrigating Citrus with Limited Water. University of California Agriculture and Natural Resources, ANR Publication(8549), 1–6.  https://doi.org/10.3733/ucanr.8549 

(2) Hall, L. S., Orr, B. K., Hatten, J. R., Lambert, A., & Dudley, T. (2020). Final report: Southwestern Willow Flycatcher (Emopidonax traillii extrimus) and Western Yellow-billed Cuckoo (Coccyzus americanus occidentalis) surveys and habitat availability modeling on the Santa Clara River, California, 26 March 2020. Submitted to the California Department of Fish and Wildlife.  file:///C:/Users/lifec/Downloads/Santa_Cruz_Pops_and_Modeling.pdf