REMEMBER the stories about how the Murray Darling Basin, the food bowl of Australia, was going to be lost to salt? Headline after media headline told of imminent ruin from rising water tables bring salt.
The Riverina, a once rich farming area in south western New South Wales, was considered most affected by this “scourge of salinity”, this “curse of salt”.
In the next year it is likely that a lot of farmers in this area will walk, will leave the Riverina, but it won’t be because of salt. Farmers in the Riverina worked with their local water corporation, Murray Irrigation Limited (MIL), and government engineers to solve the salt problem.
While it was once feared over 300,000 hectares would be lost to salt, by March 2003 the area with shallow water tables had stabilized below 20,000 hectares and is now less than 4,000 hectares.
Indeed farmers won’t be leaving because of salt. They will be leaving because of prolonged drought, and government policy.
John Lolicato, a Wakool farmer and keen fisherman, explains:
Recently there has been quite a bit of media coverage about the Wakool Landholders wanting to sell their water to the Federal Government. Please allow me the opportunity to put the situation into perspective. The vast majority of Landholders would prefer not to sell any water at all but due to practically 3 years of zero allocation with virtually no farming income and governments ad-hoc approach to spending their billions of dollars on water buy-back, they fail to recognise the role we play in producing food and fibre for the country.
The recent ABC television Four Corners program highlighted the fact that Penny Wong and her department have entered into the market to buy large amounts of water with no set plan and have absolutely no regard for the social and economic costs to the local and regional communities of water leaving their areas.
Government have actively been encouraging groups of farmers to consider the complete shut-down of irrigation throughout the region, this has been the main catalyst to encourage the Wakool Landholders Association to investigate the option for a full sale of their entitlements, recognising that large parcels of water leaving the area would affect those that remain.
Over the last 10-15 years the area has already undergone massive restructure and up until the change of Federal government the remaining farmers were still showing their confidence in being broad scale food and fibre producers by continuing to adopt best management practices as encouraged by our land and water management plans (LWMP’s). The main push was to become more efficient and sustainable for the long term and usually this meant spreading the capital base by investing in more land and infrastructure.
Now the people that had the greatest confidence in the future of irrigation farming are being hit the hardest.
Here are some of the facts:
• The majority are paying more than $40,000 a year in fixed water charges for something they haven’t received for the last 2, going on 3 years. Some are paying over $100,000 a year.
• MIL has consistently told their shareholders to prepare for a 20 – 40% reduction in their entitlements.
• Government is not prepared to acknowledge the true cost of the water buy back, only wanting to recognise the market price without any structural adjustment.
• In their wisdom government pulled out of the most successful partnership developed by the community and government – the Murray LWMP’s with only 2 years of their commitment left.
• The majority of cereal crops have failed and the prospect of being able to carry stock or grow a summer crop is very unlikely.
• Issues like the purchase of Yanga Station by government (which increased the shires rates by 5%) and striping water off irrigation country undermines confidence.
If the government was serious about their desire to retrieve water for the environment while still recognising the role irrigation plays for the efficient production of food and fibre they could have adopted one of the many proposals put forward by the various irrigation communities. The main ones being:
• The WLA put forward a proposal to sell up to 20% of their entitlements that included recognising the impact on the local community and minimising the effect on the remaining irrigators.
• Murrumbidgee Irrigation has suggested a long term lease arrangement that could be a win-win situation.
• MIL has developed an integrated package that recognises benefits to the environment and shareholders.
The Rudd Government appears to be obsessed with shutting down irrigation communities without any real strategy or plan. Attempting to justify the buy back by living the lie of the South Australian Lower Lakes and encouraging more horticulture only fuels the increasing lack of confidence of practical business people for the future of broad scale irrigation.
In summing up the Wakool district has some of the most modern and efficient infrastructure in the supply system, on farm and in the region (eg. controlled water tables). It has the most efficient and dedicated farm business people in the world but like most business people they will not continue to invest capital into a business they see very little future in while these negative signals are being sent out by Government.
John Lolicato
Barham, Australia
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The picture of John Lolicato on the banks of the Wakool River in Possum Forest, was taken by Jennifer Marohasy in October 2007.
The following chart is from the Murray Irrigation Ltd Environment and Sustainability Report 2003 (click on the image, for a larger image).
Isn't it quaint how so many green boofheads are keen to tell us how much water it takes to produce a kilo of various food items but they never then complete the job by calculating their own food consumption and adding the associated water to their own water use figures.
Of course, if they did that then we could actually measure their own output of useful products or services and then determine how much water went into their output. And the likes of deluded Green would discover that by far the biggest waste of good water was the amount that was used in their own food. Given their obvious lack of productive output, their total water use would be allocated to far too little output of note.
It was ever thus. Some people are not only a complete waste of space, they are also a complete waste of water as well.
It is not new. There was a particular intellectual giant called Eamus who's academic triumph was to calculate how much extra "value" would be created if all the water that irrigates rice was bottled and sold on the world market. It was an impressive number, but for the inconvenient fact that most of the people who depend on our rice for their survival do not have the spare cash to buy bottled water, even if they lived long enough without our rice to become a regular bottled water buyer.
It was all in his head, a classic piece of academic onanism. And some poor sods had to negotiate around that kind of village idiot tripe to get a pass grade for the subject he was lecturing in. You would worry more about the competence of those who passed rather than those that he failed.
Hi one and All including Deluded Green,
I am back from Queensland where I was witness to the stupidy of "Aus. Is Short Of Water" nonsence. Millions of megalitres of water, topsoil and debris flowing to the ocean. SCANDALOUS.
Not for discussion here.
I note Salient Green, that you lack either the knowledge, interlect or courage to answer my question:
Why is the State buying back that which it already owns?
I also note that you have not responded to my offer to meet with you and Minister Wong for a tour of the MDB.
Are you afraid of the truth?
Your responce to the purchase of existing licences confirms my belief that you have NO KNOWLEDGE of this subject.
I will not attempt to explain here, but watch this space ( Jennifer willing) for my three part series on THe Murray Darling Basin.
Your attempt at justifing water use to crop return is so infantile as to require no responce .
Interlectually "rojo" is head and shoulders above you.
Pikey.
"Return per Megalitre of water used by crops grown in the MDB
rice, $200 livestock pasture grains, $300 sugar, $400 cotton, $600 grapes,$900
fruit, $1500 vegetables, $1800"
What happens to vegie prices when 400 000ha of cotton and rice country converts to vegetable production? (130 000ha or so produce veg now) .
Last I heard they were wanting to scale back acreages
of grapes due to oversupply and low prices, despite being drought impacted.
So lots of mutterings but little of substance from Slackass Green.
Any consideration of the relative merits or otherwise of seepage from a chanel MUST include its relevance to the volume of water that actually flows over that m2? Your site did no such thing.
You quote the official evaporation rate for Wagga Wagga but fail to deduct the annual rainfall to give the net evaporation loss. Unless, of course, you seriously believe that rain doesn't fall on irrigation ditches.
You also seem to be blissfully ignorant of the fact that some of the "wasted" irrigation water actually provides valuable ecological services, being used by grasses, forbs and trees that in turn, supply habitat to native species. But of course, this is never counted by the green tight arses who regard all human impacts as negative and measure all irrigation water as an "extraction" from the ecosystem and refuse to recognise the connective significance of agricultural activities.
They don't even appear able to comprehend the fact that Murray Cod actually like to live in irrigation chanels because the water levels, and therefore the food supply, is far more reliable than what had formerly been provided by the river itself. So the dumb turds do their little surveys in the river and conclude that the species is in decline. Nope, they just recognise a good ecological niche when they find one. Which is a lot more than can be said about the green bull$hiterati.
It seems I am indeed out of my depth - in mott's BS. Mott clearly thinks his job on this site is to snow any dissenters with BS because pointing out an error in his posts brings 10 more to the funeral.
Ron, your question "How can the purchase of an irrigation licience from a farmer with no present entitlements, put extra water in the system" When it rains, and it will, there will be more water for those that are left and the environment. Now that's not too hard to understand is it?
This site should be called the "Last Gasp Blog". The last gasp of AGW deniers and now the last gasp of inefficient water users against the water buyback plan.
I will leave you now with some water use figures which tell the story of your untenable position to the rest of Australia.
Return per Megalitre of water used by crops grown in the MDB
rice, $200 livestock pasture grains, $300 sugar, $400 cotton, $600 grapes,$900
fruit, $1500 vegetables, $1800
Thanks for the update, Pikey. I seem to recall that 2.4km/hr was a standard flow rate but left it at 2km/hr for the sake of conservatism. And one small correction, the wastage on the previous calculation was only 0.0083 of 1% of total flows. Obviously a 3 metre deep chanel will be even more efficient than a chanel that is 1 metre deep.
You are also spot on about the resale of returns to the sytem. My Brother had an irrigation farm at Cobram until they took back 45% of his supply and sent him out backwards. But he mentioned that whenever it actually rained he would have to pump water back into the chanel because he already had a full soil moisture profile.
This was done at his own expense to avoid waterlogging but the authorities never gave him or anyone else any sort of credit or refund for this returned water. It was also never included in the official volumes of river flows, even when, as you say, it was re-sold down stream.
The other interesting point to note about S Greens ignorant take on water issues is that they use this seepage rate/m2 as an implied cumulative figure. So the gullible reader will multiply the daily seepage rate by 365 days to get what might appear to be a very large volume of wasted water. But in fact, once the soil in the immediate vicinity of the chanel is saturated then seepage slows considerably. And it is certainly not a continuous loss.
The other point that S Green has missed completely is that smaller but more frequent applications of flood irrigation are much more efficient than all other options. Instead of the standard 100mm application (1 ml/ha) my brother applied 65mm but more often and got superior results (on his place but not necessarily on all)
So get back under your rock, Simplistic Green, you are totally out of your depth.