💧 From Water to Wallet: How Kilimo Turns Irrigation into Farmer Income
#5 BAR Stars
The agtech pioneer making water efficiency bankable, by transforming farmers into stewards, and water savings into income.
A Bubbling Crisis
In agriculture, water has always been essential, but rarely valued. Especially across Latin America, where irrigation is often unmetered and underpriced, most farmers rely on instinct, not data. They water too much, too often, not out of carelessness, but because the economic signal to conserve simply isn’t there. Water is seen as abundant, free, and disconnected from the bottom line.
But that perception is starting to shift. As climate change intensifies droughts and water pledges pile up in corporate boardrooms, a new economy is emerging, one where every drop really does count.
That’s the economy Kilimo was built to unlock.
The Big Pivot
Kilimo began with a straightforward offer to farmers: a better way to irrigate. No sensors, no hardware, just a smart, software-based recommendation engine powered by weather data, satellite imagery, and a proprietary water balance algorithm. It told farmers exactly when and how much to water, helping them use less while maintaining or even boosting yields. Set-up took minutes. And in a sector known for complexity and delays, Kilimo’s frictionless approach won fans quickly among early adopters.
But while the product worked, growth didn’t scale as expected. Most farmers, especially in broadacre or lower-margin segments, didn’t feel enough pain to pay. Water is cheap. Energy is subsidized. And in many parts of Latin America, there’s no clear incentive to irrigate more efficiently.
That’s when Kilimo flipped the model.
Instead of charging farmers for saving water, Kilimo found a way to pay them. By measuring and verifying reductions in water use at the plot level, they began turning those savings into environmental assets—assets that companies could purchase to compensate for their own water footprints. From there, a new flywheel emerged: the more farmers adopted Kilimo’s tools, the more verified savings the platform could generate. And the more water savings it could verify, the more it could offer to corporate buyers.
The shift wasn’t just commercial. It redefined what Kilimo was. No longer just an agtech company selling irrigation advice, it became a climate platform facilitating collective action across watersheds, with farmers at the center, not the periphery.
Making Waves
What Kilimo understood early - then proved through iteration - is that water scarcity isn’t just a technical challenge. It’s an economic one. Most farmers won’t adopt new tools unless they see a direct return. And most companies won’t meet their sustainability goals unless someone helps them do it credibly, at scale.
By sitting at the intersection of those needs, Kilimo unlocked a new kind of value chain. Their platform doesn’t just track moisture. It tracks impact. It transforms invisible behaviors, like using less water, into auditable metrics that companies can claim. And it puts money in farmers’ hands for every cubic meter conserved.
This shift turned a “nice-to-have” agronomic tool into a must-have financial enabler. It also moved Kilimo out of the crowded precision ag category and into a far more scalable space: verified environmental outcomes.
In a world increasingly shaped by ESG pressures, climate risk, and natural capital accounting, Kilimo’s insight was simple but powerful: if farmers are saving the planet, they should be getting paid for it.
Going with the Flow
Kilimo is now active in seven countries across Latin America and Europe, with its platform monitoring over 220,000 hectares and supporting more than 40 crop types. Through its irrigation intelligence and verified water savings programs, the company has helped farmers conserve more than 8 million cubic meters of water and turned that conservation into a credible new revenue stream.
On the agribusiness side, Kilimo is used by leading producers such as Driscoll’s, Camposol, and Virú. On the corporate buyer side, the company is partnering with global names like Coca-Cola, helping them invest in water stewardship at the farm level. What started as a pilot quickly scaled into a multi-year contract, signaling rising demand for verified, traceable water stewardship.
Kilimo’s ecosystem also includes a growing roster of global tech companies such as AWS, Google, Microsoft, and Intel. As AI and cloud computing drive up data center water use, these companies face increasing pressure to account for their footprint and ensure the long-term viability of their operations.
That traction helped the company close a $7.5 million Series A in 2024, led by Emerald Technology Ventures, one of the largest global investors in water tech innovation. The Yield Lab Latam, which backed Kilimo at the seed stage, continues to play a key role as the company evolves from a SaaS irrigation tool into a full-fledged climate-fintech platform.
At the heart of that platform is Kilimo’s proprietary MRV (monitoring, reporting, verification) system, built to quantify water savings down to the plot. It turns invisible behavior into measurable, monetizable action. For corporate buyers, it offers a transparent path to water goals. For farmers, it’s an easy on-ramp to climate revenue.
As Kilimo enters Brazil, it brings more than technology. It brings a tested model, where farmers irrigate less, earn more, and every drop saved flows back into the economy.
Fluid Founders
Kilimo’s model may be novel, but the team behind it is grounded in years of hard-won experience. CEO Jairo Trad is a second-time agtech founder with a background in data science and digital infrastructure. CTO Juan Carlos Abdala brings deep expertise in satellite imagery and embedded systems. Agronomist Rodrigo Tissera, one of the first to join, cut his teeth in irrigation research with INTA and the FAO. And COO Tatiana Malvasio blends executional rigor with a decade in social impact and NGO leadership. And Andrea Ramos, Kilimo’s Country Manager for Chile, brings a background in international relations and expansion strategy, with years of experience scaling mission-driven organizations across Latin America.
Together, they’ve spent the last decade navigating one of agtech’s hardest realities: even when the tech works, adoption is never guaranteed. That hard-earned understanding shaped Kilimo’s most important decision, not just what to build, but for whom. By shifting their focus from farmers as customers to farmers as partners in climate adaptation, the team found a new path forward, one built on trust, transparency, and real incentives.
Now, Kilimo is doubling down on expansion, building out its MRV framework, and embedding itself deeper into the water-climate-finance stack. The goal isn’t just to help farmers irrigate more efficiently. It’s to prove that conservation can be profitable, and that Latin America can lead the way.
Thanks for reading.
KFG 🚀
Kieran Finbar Gartlan is an Irish native with over 30 years experience living and working in Brazil. He is Managing Partner at The Yield Lab Latam, a leading venture capital firm investing in Agrifood and Climate Tech startups in Latin America.