Episode 007 - Sensors, Microcontrollers, and Water Conservation in Smart Agriculture

Water is the most precious substance on earth and a primary building block of life. Humans can’t live more than a few days without it. Yet in order to grow, cultivate, process, and transport our food, we waste a tremendous amount of it. So much so that we need to pull more of it out of the ground just to satisfy our agricultural needs, making matters worse. A report in the June 2023 issue of Geophysical Research Letters indicates that depletion of groundwater was a significant contributor to sea level and climate change.
The majority of the southwestern United States, northern Australia, most of the South American continent, all of Northern Africa and the Middle East and parts of western Asia are in perennial drought. We need water to live, yet we also need water to make the food we rely on to live; and we never seem to have enough of it.

Why the tradeoff? Why so much waste?

Is there a way to reduce our consumption of water with integrated circuits and AI? 

How could Microchip Technology help conserve our most precious resource?

 

Links from the episode:

 

 

Guests: 

Ross Satchell 

Toby Sinkinson