Aussie Farmers: Not Beaten by Salt, But Drought and Government Policies
Posted by jennifer, November 18th, 2008 - under News, Opinion.
Tags: Food & Farming, Murray River, Water
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).
That graph should be etched on Rick Farleys gravestone.
The entire salinity boogeyman was his invention, the battle against it his raison d’etre. But here in the clearer light of day we are left with nothing more than a paid employee of the NFF who failed to master even the most rudimentary elements of his brief. And loaded to his pathetic eyeballs with the very worst form of Quixotic delusional narcissism, he then went on to demonise the very people he was employed to represent. His role in this on-going tragedy of the dispossession of innocent farmers will live in infamy.
“Quixotic delusional narcissism” - gawd …
Seems to me that you’d also expect lower water tables and less salt affected land due to the drought.
Do we have cast iron guarantees that the salt issue won’t be back when it rains again.
Which I’m sure you’ll all assure me it will.
Just asking …
Dear John,
Thank you for having the courage to speak out on this vital issue. As a third generation (now retired) farmer of both dryland and irrigation from the Riverina (as was my Father and G Father), I happily applaud your sentiments.
The worst of rising water tables and the resultant destruction by salt was in the 1950 and 60s. I well remember when a large area of the horticultural industry in the MIA was wiped out. I also recall when large areas of broad acre irrigated land was precluded from rice growing because of rising water tables.
However irrigators and supply authorities tackled these problems in a practical and scientific manner to the point where, as you say, the problem is rectified.
On the broader issue of management of the waters of the MDB I also applaud your sentimets.
However while you and I, with Ian Mott and others may get a warm inner glow from this agreement of principles, it will not make one jot of difference to policy unless we can effect a change of public opinion.
To that end I am happy for any like mind to contact me on pikey@wxc.com.au.
I am prepared to put as much time and effort into this as I can if I have some broard support from Irrigators and concerned citizens.
I am only interested in the broader picture, which is the practical management of the MDB in the best interests of future generations.
We are up against a symbiotic relationship that has verdantly developed between journalists and environmentalists, that has totally misinformed the public on these issues.
To win the PR battle for truth and the long term good of the Nation will require considerable effort.
Lets start now.
Pikey.
No, Luke, can you guarantee that the venal scum who govern us will refrain from extrapolating off the top of a cyclical high point, as was clearly the case with the appropriately named “salinity conspiracy”?
Look at the graph again, compare the blatant scaremongering and gross incompetence of the projection with the damning clarity of the reality on the ground.
But in fact, gross incompetence is too charitable a term to use on the people involved in this scam. They are not stupid people and there are no mere coincidences in Natural Resource Administration or Policy. What we have seen is a demonstration of some of the most ruthless and unrestrained “rat cunning” ever seen in government.
Beattie’s infamous “zero tollerance of denial” statement to an audience of stakeholders lodging legitimate concerns about so-called “salinity hazard maps” that included salt layers as deep as 200 metres as part of that threat, is a case in point. Where the 500 megalitres of additional water per hectare would come from to raise these salt layers to the surface was never mentioned.
We need to record the names of all the people involved in this appalling example of malgovernance in a suitable hall of infamy so all may know who they really were and what they did or didn’t do. For many of them are still out there, covering their past misdeeds and maintaining their venal ways. By their deeds shall ye know them.
As I have no connection with the MDB and therefore no experience with issues, I can only speak generally.
4,000 ha (10,000 acres) of salinity remaining in that basin is a wonderful achievement. Barely a decent sized farm here. I’ve got neighbours who annually sow wheat on more thatn that.
With over 100 years of family history in one spot, we know that it is not droughts that knock farners, it is what comes with them.
The what comes with them usually being human action - crashed commodity prices, government policies, partiuclarly if suddenly changed, and banks incentivised by government lolly or by rising interest rates to foreclose. Rising interest rates also being a function of government policy.
It’s good that salinity is reduced so much in the MDB.
It’s still a big problem over here in the West, however as Luke pointed out the recent reduction in rainfall has actually asisted with salt control here.
A week of so ago I talked with a Riverina rice grower. The family has been in the area for 150 years and the current drought, according to their records, is the THIRD worst in that period. So, it is not the drought that is the problem but the population growth and water usage. Farmers are paying lots for nothing and have done for years. Governments are corrupt if they charge for what they cannot deliver. Governments do not seem to have learned that they do not make rain but want to charge people for it anyway.
Former Farmer
Interesting to hear that a farmer in a very different area has come to a similar observation about what knocks farmers out in droughts. In the Riverina, more people and their demand for more water (including for ‘the environment’?).
Another area of human action that can be financially fatal is farmers own decisions. The risk-takers are often the innovative, progresive, younger ones. An old motto from flying school has relevance here. There are old pilots, and there are bold pilots, but there are no old, bold pilots. Those who survive the consquences of miscalculation - or misplaced trust - seem to grow more cautious. Wonder why?
Finally, have you noticed that governments legislate higher standards of accountability for others than they hold themselves to? A policy of charging for water that is not supplied is theft. Regardless of how cleverly it is dressed up by legislation or policy.
Some people really do not ‘get it’ yet. Water flowing past your doorstep, and over your state border, and even out to sea - especially out to sea - is NOT wasted water.
Marine ecosystems have evolved and depend on rivers flowing into the sea. The natural world along the length of a river depends on water flowing and flooding. People, real people with houses and businesses and factories and growing food depend on water flowing the entire length of the river and shared fairly and used efficiently.
The system is over-allocated and some of this allocation is poorly used. Dirt bottomed, open channels, farm darms and flood irrigation are all examples of poor use of allocated water. Growing low value, high water use crops such as rice, cotton and pasture using said practices is the poorest use of allocated water.
Over allocation has been a long term problem and is not the fault of farmers, but poor use of allocated water, to some extent, is. In the end it’s nothing personal, just pure economics and many irrigators have to go and sometimes it will hurt.
When the environmental water needs are met, and rice, organic cotton and pasture can be grown economically using best practice irrigation technology and paying the water rates of a fully rehabilitated delivery system, then they have a place in Australian agriculture.
No, Salient Green, it is you who doesn’t get it. Yes, water flowing out to sea does play a role in maintaining the health of species at the fresh/saline interface. But that is not the case with the Murray mouth because there has been a barrage in place for more than half a century which is a very effective barrier that severely restricts this interface.
A normal full moon tide of 1 metre used to flush a full 40% of the total volume of Lake Alexandrina once every day with a smaller flush in between them. That is about 800,000 megalitres every day of the week which, annually, renders the 1,500,000 megalitres of fresh water being stolen from farmers completely irrelevant in ecological terms.
That huge volume of annual tidal flushing no longer takes place because of the barrage and the absence of this normal and necessary ecological function is accounts for more than 99% of the ecological dysfunction in that estuary.
The species that inhabit that estuarine interface cannot cross a dry stone wall and have rarely done so for more than half a century. That, above all else, is the great ecological tragedy of the Murray-Darling Basin.
And as for your ignorant little sermon on river flows, you might care to determine which parts of the river system actually experience increased flows above the natural flows because of human activities. Hint, Adelaide’s water flows almost the full length of the system before it is piped off but the MDBC and the rest of the water mafia continue to list this volume as an extraction, with the loaded assumption that it delivers no ecological service during it’s transit to the extraction point.
Ditto for all the irrigation water for the lower reaches. This water delivers improved flow outcomes for most of the year and most of the climate cycle, over most of the river system.
And despite all this, in a normal year, 5 million megalitres of valuable fresh water will still dribble over the barrage and go completely to waste when it could easily be captured in Cubby style “turkey nest” storages for productive use, including being continually recycled as environmental flow.