AB 460 — Curtailment-order violations $10,000/day + $3,000/AF — indexed Jan 2026
Tulare Lake Subbasin — probationary since April 2024, reporting deadline May 1, 2026 passed
Tule Subbasin — probationary since September 2024
~67,000 acres of almond orchard removed in California in 2024
Trinitas Farming LLC — 7,500 acres, Chapter 11 filed 2024
Land value decline 25–75% documented in probationary zones
SGMA reporting deadline May 1, 2026 has passed — penalty framework now statutory
$20/AF extraction fee + $300/well base — Cal. Code Regs. tit. 23 §1040
AB 460 — Curtailment-order violations $10,000/day + $3,000/AF — indexed Jan 2026
Tulare Lake Subbasin — probationary since April 2024, reporting deadline May 1, 2026 passed
Tule Subbasin — probationary since September 2024
~67,000 acres of almond orchard removed in California in 2024
Trinitas Farming LLC — 7,500 acres, Chapter 11 filed 2024
Land value decline 25–75% documented in probationary zones
SGMA reporting deadline May 1, 2026 has passed — penalty framework now statutory
$20/AF extraction fee + $300/well base — Cal. Code Regs. tit. 23 §1040
Live in production — May 2026

SGMA enforcement is live.
Your borrowers' water risk is invisible.

Water Risk Score gives ag lenders and parametric underwriters SGMA compliance probability, dollar-denominated penalty exposure, and allocation burn rate for any California groundwater operation — backed by a cryptographically verified sensor network.

$10,000
Per day, curtailment-order violation
AB 460, effective Jan 2026
~67,000
Acres of almond orchard removed
in California in 2024
$14.97B
CA federal crop insurance liability
2024 (1.23 loss ratio)

The SGMA penalty stack is now statutory.
Lenders have no real-time view.

Every ag lender with Tulare or Tule exposure is underwriting blind. GSA reports are quarterly at best. Water bills are lagging. There is no tool that converts live extraction data into a dollar-denominated risk figure — until now.

Tier 1 — Base Well Fee
$300/well
Annual base fee per non-de-minimis well in a probationary basin. Cal. Code Regs. tit. 23 §1040.
Tier 2 — Extraction Fee
$20/AF
Applied to every acre-foot extracted by non-de-minimis pumpers in a probationary basin.
Tier 3 — Curtailment Violation, Volumetric
$3,000/AF
Applied per acre-foot diverted in violation of a curtailment order. AB 460 base of $2,500/AF, inflation-indexed to $3,000/AF effective Jan 1, 2026 (SWRCB Res. 2025-0039).
Tier 4 — Curtailment Violation, Daily
$10,000/day
AB 460, inflation-indexed by SWRCB Res. 2025-0039 effective Jan 1, 2026. Accrues daily for each day a curtailment order is violated.

Sources verified May 2026: Cal. Code Regs. tit. 23 §1040 · AB 460 (2024), Water Code §§1845–1846 · SWRCB Res. 2025-0039 (CPI indexing, eff. Jan 1, 2026) · SWRCB Res. 2024-0012 (Tulare Lake) · SWRCB Res. 2024-0030 (Tule)

Documented Bankruptcy — 2024
Trinitas Farming LLC
7,500 acres, San Joaquin Valley. Filed Chapter 11 citing SGMA-driven curtailment of water access as primary cause. Asset value destruction still ongoing.
Documented Collateral Collapse — 2024
Amrik Singh Basra — Madera County
Farmland valued at $9M pre-SGMA enforcement. Bank called loans at $4M after water access uncertainty triggered covenant breach. 56% collateral loss.
The Product

Three API endpoints. One underwriting workflow.

Every response is backed by PULSE v17.2 live sensor data and an Ed25519-signed DAG attestation chain. A loan officer gets a 20-minute underwrite instead of a 3-week manual review.

GET /api/v1/compliance/[site_id]

SGMA compliance score for a single farm site. Returns compliance probability, grade, penalty exposure in dollars, and allocation burn rate — all cryptographically verified from live sensor data.

  • Compliance probability 0–100 score + A/B/C/D grade
  • Penalty exposure dollar amount based on live extraction volume
  • Allocation burn rate days until annual allocation is exhausted
  • Extraction confidence live or provisional, always labeled
  • Attestation chain Merkle root + Ed25519 signatures + auditor approval
GET /api/v1/compliance/site-a-block-1 → 200 OK
{ "site_id": "site-a-block-1", "site_display_name": "Operation Alpha — Block 1", "compliance_period": "2025-10-01 to present", "compliance_probability_score": 87, "compliance_grade": "B", "basin_status": "probationary", "fee_assessment": { "probationary_basin_fees": { "base_well_fee_usd": 300, "extraction_fee_usd": 8420, "total_usd": 8720 }, "penalty_exposure": { "assessed": false } }, "estimated_extraction_af": 421.0, "extraction_confidence": "live", "allocation_af": 1200, "days_until_allocation_exhausted": 94, "chain_verified": true, "merkle_root": "a3f2e9d1b4c8f7...", "auditor_approved": true, "total_attestations": 47 }
GET /api/v1/compliance/company/[company_id]

Portfolio-level score for multi-entity operators. Farm Credit loan officers running 16 LLCs under one borrower get a single compliance score with a per-entity breakdown sorted by risk.

  • Portfolio compliance score weighted across all entities
  • Total penalty exposure rolled up across every site
  • Highest-risk entity surfaced immediately for triage
  • Per-entity breakdown sorted descending by penalty exposure
  • Replaces 3 weeks of manual GSA report compilation
GET /api/v1/compliance/company/operation-alpha → 200 OK
{ "company_id": "operation-alpha", "company_name": "Operation Alpha", "portfolio_compliance_score": 82, "total_entities": 16, "total_acres": 2600, "total_extraction_af": 4821.0, "total_fee_exposure_usd": { "state_extraction_fee": 96420, "state_well_fee": 4800, "gsa_over_allocation_penalty": 23580, "total": 124800 }, "entities_at_risk": 4, "highest_risk_entity": { "site_id": "site-a-block-8", "compliance_grade": "D", "fee_breakdown": { "total_usd": 38400 } }, "chain_verified": true }
POST /api/v1/byos/ingest

Bring Your Own Sensors. Any farm with any soil sensor brand submits readings and receives a provisional compliance score. Enables Farm Credit to score their entire borrower portfolio, not just AgWaterAI-monitored farms.

  • Supports Irrometer, METER Zentra, Delta-T, generic VWC export formats
  • Normalizes to canonical format via the van Genuchten conversion layer
  • Returns provisional score with confidence label — always transparent
  • Every provisional response includes an upgrade path to full attestation
  • No AgWaterAI hardware required to receive a score
POST /api/v1/byos/ingest → 200 OK
{ "site_id": "borrower-farm-9284", "data_source": "byos", "sensor_brand": "Irrometer", "extraction_confidence": "provisional", "compliance_probability_score": 61, "compliance_grade": "C", "basin_status": "probationary", "fee_assessment": { "probationary_basin_fees": { "total_usd": 14200 }, "penalty_exposure": { "assessed": false } }, "upgrade_note": "Install AgWaterAI sensors to receive a cryptographically attested compliance score eligible for water credit programs." }
Architecture

Cryptographic proof from sensor to score.

The attestation chain is the moat. Every compliance score traces back to a signed sensor reading. An underwriter, a GSA auditor, or a court can verify the chain independently. That is what makes these scores defensible as a parametric trigger or a loan covenant metric.

🔩
Sentek Sensor
Drill & Drop probes. Live VWC at 6 depths. Nick's 9-year network.
📡
PULSE v17.2
VWC → acre-feet. R²=0.934 walk-forward. Crop-agnostic soil physics.
🔗
DAG-TAT Chain
Ed25519-signed nodes. Merkle root. Immutable audit chain per attestation.
📊
Compliance Score
Probability + grade + dollar exposure. Basin-specific SGMA logic applied.
🏦
Lender / MGA API
Enterprise key. Audit log. Per-site access control. JSON response in <200ms.
🔏
Ed25519 Signatures
Every sensor reading node signed at ingest. Tamper-evident by construction.
🌲
Merkle Root
Per-attestation Merkle root allows partial verification without full data export.
Auditor Approval
SGMA auditor co-signs qualifying attestations. Chain is court-admissible.
📋
Audit Log
Every API access logged. Farmer sees who pulled their score and when.

BYOS: Score every borrower in your portfolio,
not just our farms.

Without BYOS, the compliance API only scores farms running AgWaterAI-deployed Sentek sensors. That limits a Farm Credit cooperative to maybe 33 sensor blocks in their portfolio.

With BYOS, any borrower that already has any sensor brand can submit readings and receive a provisional compliance score. Farm Credit licenses the API for their entire portfolio of sensor-equipped borrowers — not just AgWaterAI farms.

Supported sensor brands:

AgWaterAI Sentek
Irrometer
METER Zentra
Delta-T Devices
Generic VWC CSV
+ more on request

The Sensor Flywheel

01
Farm Credit licenses the API for SGMA-exposed borrower portfolio
02
Loan officers require sensor data for probationary-basin renewals
03
Borrowers without sensors need to install them to qualify for renewal
04
AgWaterAI sensor deployment is funded by loan covenant pressure — no cold selling
05
Larger network → higher API value → Farm Credit renews at higher price
Competitive Landscape

Nothing else closes the loop from sensor to compliance score.

AQUAOSO — now branded Agcor under Growers Edge — sells parcel-level water-rights data to ag lenders and is the nearest incumbent. What it does not have, and cannot retrofit without a sensor network, is live measurement, a compliance probability, a dollar-denominated penalty figure, and a cryptographic proof chain.

Capability AgWaterAI AQUAOSO / Agcor
(Growers Edge, Dec 2024)
Hydrosat
(€51M raised)
Manual Review
(GSA reports + water bills)
Live soil sensor data Satellite only
SGMA compliance probability score
Dollar-denominated penalty exposure
Multi-entity / multi-LLC rollup
Cryptographic attestation chain
Lender / underwriter access Live API Static platform
Market Context

The numbers that make this a tier-one problem
for lenders and carriers.

$65–91M
Asset value of a single 2,600-acre SJV orchard operation. $35–60M in credit exposure per borrower at scale. One portfolio review call.
$5.2B
Global parametric ag insurance by 2035 at 7.2% CAGR. Current satellite triggers (SMAP, NDVI) cannot produce an SGMA compliance probability. We are the only trigger that can.
$500K–$1.5M
Annual API license tier for a Farm Credit cooperative covering their full CA borrower portfolio. Replaces $5–15K per-property water consultant reports at scale.
2 basins
Currently probationary and in active enforcement: Tulare Lake and Tule. Combined: tens of thousands of acres, hundreds of loans with unquantified SGMA exposure today.
11M+
Sensor readings across 9 years of Nick's deployment network. The training data and attestation history that powers PULSE v17.2 and the compliance scores. Cannot be replicated.

Realistic buyer timeline.
No SOC 2 required to start.

Now → 3 months
Parametric MGAs
Arbol, Descartes — Data Science Evaluation
They send historical farm data. We score it. They compare against existing satellite drought triggers. If scores add predictive value, they draft a data licensing LOI. No SOC 2 required to start the evaluation. Current triggers (SMAP, NDVI) cannot produce an SGMA compliance probability or dollar-denominated penalty figure. We are the only product that can.
No SOC 2 needed 3–6 month timeline $150–250K LOI
3–6 months
Farm Credit
AgWest, American AgCredit — Research Pilot
20–30 SGMA-exposed borrowers, 6 months, $25–50K — small enough to avoid board approval, though still subject to standard vendor risk review (data agreement, insurance, security questionnaire). Can begin before SOC 2 Type I completes. Best scoped as portfolio analytics, not a direct credit-underwriting input. The entry point is a warm loan officer already stressed about probationary-basin exposure, not a cold enterprise RFP.
Below board-approval size Vendor risk review applies $25–50K pilot
12–18 months
Enterprise contract
Full Enterprise Integration
API embedded in loan management system for all CA borrowers. Requires SOC 2 Type II (estimated ~February 2027), E&O insurance, DPA, API SLA. The Farm Credit pilot results become the proof that converts LOI to full contract.
SOC 2 Type II required $500K–$1.5M/yr ARR
Year 2–3
Crop insurance AIPs
Chubb / Rain and Hail, NAU Country — Actuarial Repricing
Requires actuarial model validation, potential state insurance department review, and RMA approval if it touches federal crop insurance rate-setting. Start conversations in Year 2 with Farm Credit pilot results and a parametric MGA LOI as proof of market validation.
Year 2 target Actuarial validation required
🔒
Patent protected. This technology is covered under provisional patents DV-2026-004 and DV-2026-006, filed with the USPTO May 2026. The method of converting live sensor readings into a cryptographically verified compliance export for SGMA enforcement, underwriters, and lenders is proprietary to AgWaterAI.

Ready to score your borrower portfolio?

We are running a limited research pilot with Farm Credit cooperatives and parametric MGAs. No SOC 2 required to start. A data science evaluation costs you nothing.

🏦
Farm Credit / Ag Lender
Score 20–30 SGMA-exposed borrowers in a 6-month pilot. $25–50K. Below procurement threshold. Start in weeks, not quarters.
📈
Parametric MGA / Underwriter
Data science evaluation at no cost. Send us historical farm data, we return compliance scores. Compare against your existing satellite triggers.
🌱
Crop Insurance AIP
Year 2 target. Come back with Farm Credit pilot results in hand — we will have the SOC 2 Type II and actuarial documentation ready.

Responses within 24 hours. No SOC 2 required to start an evaluation.
Farmer data is never shared without explicit opt-in consent.