The Unseen Force: Unlocking the Energy Potential in Your Farm's Water System

In the world of agriculture, the conversation around sustainability is complex. We recently asked agricultural professionals to name the hardest part of balancing their operations, and the answers touched on every corner of the farm: water, energy, land, and inputs. While each presents its own unique challenge, two of them—water and energy—are so deeply intertwined that they can no longer be addressed in isolation.

It’s a well-known fact that agriculture accounts for about 70% of global freshwater withdrawals. What’s less discussed is the energy required to manage that water. Every gallon pumped for irrigation carries an energy cost. But the real story goes deeper than the pumps; it’s about the unseen force within the pipes themselves: pressure.

The Energy Hiding in Plain Sight

Where water moves, energy moves. On a farm, water systems are engineered to operate under significant pressure. This force is necessary to move water across vast distances, overcome changes in elevation, and ensure every sprinkler head or drip emitter functions correctly.

This pressure comes from two main sources: pumps that create it artificially, and gravity in systems fed from high-elevation sources like canals or reservoirs. In many cases, the pressure within the main lines is far greater than what is needed at the point of use. Standard engineering practice is to treat this excess pressure as a liability—a force that must be safely managed.

To do this, the system is designed to convert this powerful potential energy into a less useful form, typically low-grade heat through friction. It’s an effective method of control, but it represents a fundamental missed opportunity. That excess pressure is a form of clean, potential energy that is being actively wasted as an unusable resource.

A New Perspective on a Familiar System

For decades, we’ve accepted this energy conversion as a simple cost of doing business. But in an era of rising energy costs and ambitious sustainability goals, it’s worth asking a new set of questions.

What if we viewed this excess pressure not as a problem to be managed, but as an asset to be harvested?

What if the force required for irrigation could also generate usable power, offsetting the costs of the very pumps creating it elsewhere in the system?

This isn’t about changing water consumption or reinventing irrigation schedules. It’s about re-examining the energy potential that already exists within the infrastructure on farms across the country. The physics are already at play; the water is already in motion. The opportunity lies in seeing the system not just as a conduit for water, but as a conduit for untapped energy.

The future of sustainable agriculture won't just be about conservation, but about innovation that finds value in overlooked places. The energy flowing through our farms is immense; the next great harvest might be learning how to capture it.