GRI EN 26 Water Conservation Where Water and Land are Already Scarce — Hawaii

Our technology and manufacturing sites on three islands in the state of Hawaii provide an interesting perspective on water scarcity. Each year, our seed passes through our sites in Hawaii multiple times in its breeding, biotechnology trait development, trait integration, pre-foundation and foundation seed production development. Water there is limited, and our teams have taken steps to conserve as much as we can.

Our people utilize a drip irrigation method to produce crops. This method delivers water directly into the plant root zone and reduces the amount of fertilizer needed to produce the crop. We’ve found that this method saves more than eleven million gallons of water per year and also uses 60 percent less nitrogen.

185, 000 GALLONS OF R1 WATER PER DAY

Additionally, our Biotechnology Trait Conversion Center on Maui utilizes R1 water from the municipal waste system to produce corn seed. R1 water is defined as “tertiary treated recycled water that can be used without restriction.” We use over 185,000 gallons of R1 water per day as opposed to fresh water.