In 2010, the Irrigation Association, Fairfax, Virginia, and the Irrigation Innovation Consortium, Fort Collins, Colorado, sought to shed light on what was relatively unknown about the irrigation industry. The solution to answer questions regarding the irrigation industry’s size and overall magnitude across agriculture and landscape was a first-time economic impact study.
Now, more than 10 years later, the study was continued to re-examine the still mysterious irrigation industry. Released Dec. 2, 2021, the 2020 economic impact study went deeper than its predecessor, this time analyzing economic drivers and other value-added aspects, says the study’s principal researcher, George Oamek of Headwaters Corporation located in Kearney, Nebraska.
“At the time the study was done in 2010, the industry was kind of at a low point due to the recession that had occurred recently,” Oamek says. “The question (for the updated study) was, did we catch the industry then at a low point or an average point?”
Completing this new study wasn’t a traditional process of obtaining data and numbers. Oamek explains that because a good chunk of the industry is privately held and companies prefer to stay anonymous, Oamek and his fellow researchers listened to anecdotes from about a dozen of the industry’s leaders. These anecdotes then revealed trends experienced among the industry.
The 2020 survey revealed a healthy industry with an about $9 billion direct economic impact and a $23.3 billion impact when including indirect induced impacts. There are over 70,000 jobs across the industry, which grows to 167,000 jobs when including secondary impacts.
According to Oamek, one of the greatest takeaways on the landscape side of the economic impact study is that the irrigation industry moves with the economy. Seemingly major factors like water conservation issues, regional droughts and policies created to solve these environmental complications failed to make a notable impact on the landscape side of the irrigation industry. At the helm of the landscape irrigation industry is the housing shortage and boom in construction to fill that void.
“I think we can state with some degree of confidence that the proportion of new housing that has the automatic sprinklers and some sort of accommodation for irrigation for landscaping is increasing over time,” Oamek says. “Landscaping really adds to the value of the house. … You don’t put in an expensive landscape system without putting in an irrigation system to accompany it.”
Even in places experiencing water shortages and growing replacements of turf landscaping, the need for irrigation increases. Oamek explains that this is because turf replacement programs are more frequently replacing the turf with natural plants. These new landscaped areas need water, which is most often provided through drip irrigation.
“The landscape industry has a reason to be optimistic, because the new landscapes are still irrigating and are more precise,” Oamek says.
The full study and the executive summary are available for review on the IA’s website.
