Smart Irrigation Month Q&A: Mazzei

Mazzei Injector Company

Jim Lauria, vice president of sales and marketing

What does smart irrigation look like to Mazzei?

Smart irrigation utilizes a wide range of technology, from sensors to software to highly refined delivery systems, to make irrigation more efficient and effective. With an expanding world population that needs food, water and clean air to survive, growers need to learn how to grow more crop per drop without negatively impacting our soil, air, and water.

Irrigation is perfectly situated to be the mechanism for a wide range of improvements because water is not only vital for crop growth, but it can also be a highly efficient way of delivering nutrients, crop protection or enhancement products, and even oxygen to crops. Smart irrigation can also be used to improve the sustainability of crop input use, from reducing water consumption to capturing more carbon, lowering the amount of nitrogen applied to reduce nitrate leaching into groundwater and even nitrous oxide emissions into the atmosphere. Finally, irrigation also integrates into any type of farming system, including conventional, regenerative and controlled environment/vertical operations.

How does Mazzei promote smart irrigation?

First, Mazzei promotes smart irrigation by providing manufacturers with venturi injectors and mixing technologies that make their systems more effective, and working to develop new, inventive ways to make irrigation more efficient. On the communications front, we work to raise awareness of smart irrigation technologies like automatic fertigation and oxygenation of soil and water.

We tell the story of smart irrigation on a number of different platforms like LinkedIn, Water Online and the Mazzei website.

Why highlight/promote “Smart Irrigation Voices” on the Water You Talking About? podcast? What do you hope that accomplishes?

There isn’t a single product or idea that is going to fix these problems. It will take many products, many great minds, many changes and many new technologies. We are one big planet and people. We need to work together to solve these problems, not in silos. So, Adam Tank and I have created a forum that lets us bring together visionaries, thinkers and storytellers in a conversation about water.

If we can promote other great ideas that help prevent water shortages, soil contamination and air pollution, we jump at the chance. Also, bringing these voices on smart irrigation to Water Online’s broader audience of municipal and industrial water users provides us all with a better understanding of how irrigation water factors into the rest of the water space.

This year’s Smart Irrigation Month theme is “Proud of our past. Focused on the future.” What makes you proud of smart irrigation’s past, and how are you focusing on smart irrigation’s future?

Angelo Mazzei has always looked for answers to problems. When the California Aqueduct started bringing high-pressure water supplies to farmers, Angelo was determined to find a way to easily fertilize the fields safely — and his Mazzei venturi injector was born. And when he saw that water availability and pollution were becoming a problem for California, he thought of a way to utilize air to feed the crops, use less water, aerate the soil without destroying its physical structure and improve plant health. And today, his company is using multi-phase computational fluid dynamics analysis to make his products and systems the most efficient they can be. I wonder what the next problem Mazzei Injector Company will strive to solve?

What makes you a champion of promoting smart irrigation? Is there something new or different you’d like to try in order to improve smart irrigation?

My philosophy is simple: encourage others to work together to find answers. There isn’t one magic pill. Combining ideas and technologies will improve smart irrigation. At Mazzei, we have worked with other companies in their efforts to produce smart irrigation products, sharing our knowledge to make their systems better. We all need to think outside the box and share information to make the large impact that is needed.

Read other Smart Irrigation Month Q&As.