Water Book

  1. Overview
  2. Foreword
  3. Contents, Acknowledgements
  4. Introduction
  5. Chapter 1: Current water availability and use
  6. Chapter 2: Water values
  7. Chapter 3: Water and climate
  8. Chapter 4: Groundwater
  9. Chapter 5: Water quality
  10. Chapter 6: Urban water sustainability
  11. Chapter 7: Future urban water supplies
  12. Chapter 8: Irrigation
  13. Chapter 9: Water for the environment
  14. Chapter 10: Water in mining and industry
  15. Chapter 11: Conclusions
  16. Endnotes, Index

Chapter 8: Irrigation

Page 12 of 16

Sprinklers irrigating a field of Lucerne.

By Mac Kirby

Irrigated agriculture is productive and profitable, generating 50 per cent of all agricultural profit from just 0.5 per cent of agricultural land.

Overview

Australia exports 60 per cent of its agricultural produce and demand should grow with increased standards of living and growing global populations.

Two-thirds of irrigation in Australia occurs in the Murray–darling Basin where it faces major challenges from climate change, return of water to the environment, and an increasingly open water market.

New irrigation development is occurring in Tasmania and there are prospects for new developments in northern Australia, and along the east coast.

Increasing demand for irrigated agriculture and declining water availability will drive increases in the efficiency of irrigated agriculture.

Efficiency can be improved through more water-efficient crop varieties, improved farm management, precision applications of water, and more efficient irrigation supply canals, and river management.

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Interview with chapter author Mac Kirby

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Transcript

In the Murray-Darling Basin half a percent of the land approximately is irrigated, and this produces something like a quarter of the total value of agriculture in the Basin, and about half of the total profit. So we see that irrigated agriculture is much more profitable and productive than dry land, and the reason is because we’re giving it extra water, and it provides for greater crop growth.

And that in fact is the reason why we irrigate at all. Australia has a dry, hot, and variable climate, and as a result dry land agriculture has to contend with times when there’s no rain, big droughts, and so on, and the idea of irrigation is simply to smooth that out and provide a reliable supply of water all the time, hence we get this greater productivity and greater profitability of agriculture.

I mentioned that half a percent of the Murray-Darling Basin is irrigated, and although that’s a small proportion, that represents ⅔ of the irrigation in the whole of Australia, so the Murray-Darling Basin is far and away the largest part of Australia’s irrigation.

Irrigation in the Murray-Darling Basin faces major challenges. The first challenge is from climate change. Climate change is projected to reduce the total amount of water available in the Basin, and this will reduce the amount of water available to irrigation. Secondly, Australia aspires to return water to the environment, and this means that less water will be available for irrigation. The idea is to return water to environmental flows and increase the environmental values in rivers. The third challenge is just the changing nature of irrigation, and in particular market forces. Water is now tradable, and water can be sold from one farming enterprise to another, and this presents new challenges for irrigation, and new demands on management.

Irrigation does have some opportunities to meet these challenges primarily through increased efficiency. Water can be delivered more efficiently to the farms through the canal systems, and water can be used more efficiently on the farms to produce more crops from a given volume of water.

So what then are the overall prospects for irrigation into the future? Well, on the whole they look good, because world population is growing, and people are going to need more food, and irrigation is well placed to provide this.


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