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\nDriving along the manicured streets of monied Los Angeles neighborhoods, it\u2019s a challenge to think of California as rain-starved and sun-choked.<\/p>\n
But a trip along Interstate 5 reveals a different world. Miles of browning grass stretch along the roadside, broken by the green clusters of California\u2019s farms, which provide fruits, vegetables and nuts to most American households.<\/p>\n
California is the top farm producer in the U.S. In 2015, the state\u2019s farms and ranches harvested approximately $47 billion for their output<\/a>, vastly outstripping the yields of Texas and Iowa, the second- and third-largest producers.<\/p>\n Yet yields are declining, and farmers in the state face a host of pressures stemming from the persistent drought<\/a> that has ravaged California\u2019s countryside.<\/p>\n This drought has pushed the agricultural industry to take steps that only exacerbate the problems that the lack of rainfall has caused.<\/p>\n To address the depleted water supply, California\u2019s farmers have pumped water from strained groundwater pools<\/a>, and at the same time are using more fertilizer (whose production and use\u00a0contribute\u00a0to the increasing greenhouse gasses<\/a> that affect the climate, encouraging the ongoing drought conditions in the state).<\/p>\n \u201cClimate conditions have exposed our house of cards,\u201d Jay Famiglietti, a NASA scientist who studies water supplies told The New York Times <\/em>in April. \u201cThe withdrawals far outstrip the replenishment. We can\u2019t keep doing this.\u201d<\/p>\n At the same time, farmers are faced with a problem that they should never be forced to anticipate. The massive amount of food waste<\/a> that crops, fruits, vegetables and meat are subject to.<\/p>\n Enter KDC Ag<\/a>, a\u00a0new operating company that purports to have a solution for both the water crisis affecting farms across the country and our nation\u2019s food waste dilemma.<\/p>\n The result of years of\u00a0research and millions of dollars in investment, KDC Ag is commercializing a technology that claims to solve the three intertwined problems of fertilizer overuse, food waste and water scarcity in farming.<\/p>\n If it works, the company has a multi-million-dollar business on its hands.<\/p>\n It wouldn\u2019t be the first time for the Kamine family, the founders of KDC Ag. The family\u00a0has already made its millions in the energy business in the early 1990s<\/a>. At that time, renewable energy was more of a pipe dream than a reality. But the company\u2019s founder (and Kamine\u00a0patriarch<\/a>) took the problem literally and created a power business that became one of the largest in the Northeast.<\/p>\n \u201cMy grandfather was a plumber,\u201d says Justin Kamine, who launched the KDC Ag subsidiary for the family. \u201cMy father grew up in the boiler rooms and wastewater systems. He started his own business after college and created a business doing wastewater heat recovery. He mortgaged his house four times, but eventually got GE interested in the efforts.\u201d<\/p>\nFrom energy to food<\/h2>\n