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).
Jennifer Marohasy BSc PhD is a critical thinker with expertise in the scientific method.
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.
To Salient Green,
Your dishonest style and misrepresenting what I said only diminishes you Ian Mott.
You know full well that I said “marine ecosystems’, not “fresh/saline interface”. It is the mineral and organic nutrient outflow from healthy rivers which is vital for marine ecosystems and it is over allocation and poor water use which “severely restricts” this outflow.
You also know full well that the barrages were built in an attempt to mitigate some of the problems created by reduced flows due to over allocation.
Your offensive ‘ignorant sermon’ remark is also wrong because you see I am an irrigator and I know people who have these views and I also know a person who was employed by the NSW government to prevent as much water as possible from flowing into SA.
You also know full well that water is not being ‘stolen’ from farmers but that they are selling it and the government is buying it. If you are refering to reduced allocations as theft, then that position is equally ridiculous.
Cubby style anything is the last thing this river system needs with it’s huge evaporation and seepage losses and 5000 gigalitres flowing over the barrages being normal? Give me a break.
Sorry about that, I don’t know what happened.
To Salient Green
Your comments regarding irrigation practices in the MDB show a total lack of knowledge on this subject.
Irrigation in the valleys of the MDB commenced just 100 years ago and since that time the methods of supply, distribution and use have been constantly improved. It is not coincidental that wherever broard acre irrigated agriculture is practiced on flood plains (India, China, USA, Italy, Brazil) water is transported by gravity through open canals. This is because it is the most efficient method and likely to remain so for a very long time.
Canals built through silt clays lose no water to seepage and it is not practical to move the quantities of water any other way. In the middle of summer the Main Canal serving the Murrumbidgee Irrigation Area delivers around 5,000 megalitres per day.
Where water is transported over porous soils (mainly for horticulture) it has been conveyed in concrete or sealed channels for many years.
IN short the irrigation practices in use in the MDB are presently worlds best practice.
Your claims about crop selection is also without fact, but I will not address that here.
Facts are the management of the river system is much closer to what you are suggesting than you realise.
I ask you and Minister Wong these simple questions.
How can the system be over allocated, when the farmers do not own any water?
All of the water in all of the streams is owned by the State authorities!
Why is the state buying back that which it already owns?
How can the purchase of an irrigation licience from a farmer with no present entitlements, put extra water in the system?
It can not and it will not!
Fact is this is the most ridiculous argument I have ever seen in Australian politics.
Most of what is being claimed is concocted misinformation, mostly from folk who do not know, but sadly sometimes from those who do know better but have another agenda.
Pikey.
Ron, seepage losses from open channels
http://www.irrigation.org.au/seepage/2_seepageRisk.html
shows that even clays lose 82L/sq metre /day then you add evaporation losses of 2 metres/annum and it adds up to a lot of water not getting on the crop.
Best practice for broadacre is centre pivot delivered by pipelines.
To Salient Green,
Just a quick response as I am off to look at the run-off in southern Queensland and will not be back before Monday.
I have only had a quick look at the report you suggested and generally the situation is this.
It has always been in the interests of both the sellers of water ( State authorities) and the entities buying water (Farmers) to ensure that as little water as possible is lost during distribution. This has been an ongoing work for 90 years.
If we accept your figures regarding seepage loss then the Main Canal servicing the MIA which is 150 Klms. long would be losing 590 megalitres per day.
It is not! But may have been many years ago.
Present losses are around 200 mgls per day, which includes all losses. Check with Murrumbidgee Water.
Nett evaporation in the Riverina, while it obviously varies from year to year, is on average 1 metre per year.
I have also seen claims around what you have stated, but they are not correct. I have also seen papers written by so called learned folk that claim that the evaporation from Menindee Lakes is one and a half Billion litres per year. This just happens to be near its total capacity and is hugely inaccurate.
We kept records for over 30 years and around 1 metre is it.
But lets assume that the loses were as claimed or worse. There is presently no other way to deliver this water over this vast area. It is physically not possible except at huge and uneconomic cost.
The property I sold upon retirement had 1000 hects. of lasered permanent bed, furrow irrigation, all on silt clays growing seed crops, corn, wheat, soy beans and clover.
We also had 5 centre pivot circles serviced by three 180 acre pivots. These were servicing undulating sandy soils, growing Potatoes and other vegetable crops.
To say that Centre pivots are best practice is to show a total lack of practical experience.
Centre pivots have a place in irrigated agriculture but only on some crops and on land that cannot be watered more economically. Pivots use less water but require huge inputs of capex, upkeep and energy, either from mains power or from diesel motors.
They are not the answer to this perceived problem.
All of the present application methods have a place, however when it comes to the large scale production of crops like corn, soya beans, many vegetables, cotton and many others, then furrow irrigated bed farming is world best practice and as practiced in the MDB is as good as any I have seen anywhere in the world.
Still waiting for you to answer my questions.
Please feel free to ask Penny Wrong as she will not speek to me.
Pikey.
Ron, the main channel in the MIA has to convey 5 Gigs a day to allow for seepage, evaporation and inefficient irrigation practices.
Growers in unrehabilitated areas often must take water when it is scheduled to them instead of when it is best for the crop so they tend to over- water. Irrigating during the day when you have no choice in the matter results in more evaporation losses. You can’t use drip irrigation when you can’t have water on demand. All highly efficient irrigation systems require water on demand to work to their best.
It has been estimated that rehabilitating the MIA alone would save 1500 Gigs. I wrote to Minister Wong suggesting that a massive rehabilitation effort would save more than the minimum required for environmental flows and buyback could be used only where communities were not at risk.
I have since realized that many of the crops grown could not be economical with water rates paid in rehabilitated system. Personally, I like that we grow our own rice but not that we use far too much water to grow it for other countries. Cotton is grown without having to account for the environmental damage and I would be happy to see the end of all non-organic cotton growing in Australia.
Ron, evaporation for last 12 months at Wagga Wagga 1890mm using BOM figures. Very fine sediments laid down from irrigation water could explain lower seepage losses but so could poor or fudged accounting. 200 Megs/day for all losses I could believe in the fairies before I believe that big fat porky.
If you weren’t so emotional about the issue, and I can’t blame you, you would see that your questions are not very good ones and are easily answered with a little rational thought.
More systematic ignorance by SGreen. The figure of 5,000,000 megalitres of outflow over the barrage in a normal year was providedto the House of Reps Inquiry 2004 by none other than the Murray Darling Basin Commission.
Your link to seepage rates showed a table, purporting to be a summary of the literature, that did not include the reports that showed a range of much smaller seepage rates by Dunstone 1998, ie as low as 2.4l/m2/day up to a max of 116l/m2/day. This was the actual seepage rates from existing systems while your table dealt with experimental rates from various substrates.
But even your figure of 82litres/m2/day ignores the fact that the water moves along the chanel at about 2km/hour or 48000 metres/day. And if the chanel is 1 metre deep then the total loss of water will be 48,000 times 82 litres = 3.96Kl against a total delivery of 48,000Kl, a percentage loss rate of 4/48,000 or 0.83 of 1%.
Bogan
To Everybody,
I really do not have time for all this nonsence.
Salient Green: You said somewhere you were an irrigation farmer.
I can only assume it is with a hose in the backyard.
Am I emotional? Yes you bet, because what I am hearing here is mostly nonsence.
First: Farmers order water 1 to 2 days in advance from the supply authority. Your comments regarding day watering and drip irrigation display a total lack of understanding of this industry.
Most large area farms during summer water 24 hours per day, 7 days per week unless there is rain.
Total evaporation is meaningless in a practical sence. It does rain at Wagga.
The only person here who is off with the faries is you. You demonstrate a total lack of understanding of this subject.
If the questions are so easy to answer, why not do so.
In fact why not come out from behind that “Green” mask and lets have a real debate about this matter.
Better still how about joining me on a tour of the MDB.
Lets call it a FACT FINDING TOUR. You may be surprised. I will do so if you can get along Penny Wong.
Second: 200 Megs per day are the losses from the Main Canal. Not the MIA.
To Ian Mott: While the rate of movement varies with the volume, most of the canals in the irrigated areas of the MDB, move at above 2 klms hour during summer.
Average depth of canals like Coleambally, Mulwala and Main are more like 3 metres.
Total losses across the system average around 16%. That is the difference between what is delivered into the canal system at the river and what is sold to irrigators in the various regions.
However that is not the whole story.
All authorities are forced to deliver more water than is mostly required because of the time delay from dam to farmer. Variews from 5 to 7 days.
This water finds its way to the drainage system which is then sold to farmers further down the valley.
Guess what Salient Green?
The irrigation authorities actually sell more water from drainage upvalley than is lost in delivery.
Because when it rains on watered soil, most of the precipitation runs off.
Much of the water in the lower Murray has in fact earnt the state income multiple times.
If you can’t work it out, drop me a note.
In the interim I await your reply to my questions.
Pikey.
“You also know full well that the barrages were built in an attempt to mitigate some of the problems created by reduced flows due to over allocation.”
Actually the Barrages were built (30’s-40’s) at a time when water extracted for irrigation was less than a third of today’s “normal”. Now correct me, but the govt plan to buy back 3000GL or so, suggests 8000GL of licensing is OK, but according to you 3500GL(30’s extraction figures) was too much then. Something doesn’t add up. Either the Barrages were built to create a permanent freshwater lake, or extraction at any level during low inflow months was too much. Me thinks the former. Accepted knowledge suggests the lakes were fresh 95% of the time- well so far they’ve been “fresh” 100% of the time since 1940.
Have to laugh every time someone believes we shouldn’t grow cotton, but grapes instead. There’s an important food crop if ever there was one. A couple of years ago they paid growers to leave them on the vines- pure water efficiency there. They tell me there is chronic oversupply of grapes this year too, drought notwithstanding.
What people miss when complaining about cotton is that not only does cotton produce lint, but over a tonne of seed per acre. Seed that produces oil for human consumption, but also high quality feed for animals. Ask your chip shop what sort of oil they use.
A great crop of sunflowers is 1 tonne/acre(though it does produce more oil).
As Australians are THE most efficient growers in the world both in yield and water use efficiency, it is actually a disservice to the world by not growing cotton here. Water wasted on cotton in other countries would be better used on grain crops that they can grow efficiently.
Typical losses- deep drainage- from clay soils in cotton growing areas are in the order of 1-6mm a day. 1-6L/m2. Soil holds approx 150-200mm of moisture, but we apply at 70-90mm deficits, soil moisture probes have shown that the profile is not fully re-filled after first in-crop irrigation(no deep drainage). The cotton crop canopy usually has completely covered the rows by 2nd irrigation, negating direct evaporation losses- creating a shady microclimate.
Furrow irrigation stands up well against irrigation systems that require water to be sprayed over the crop, where our soils become to wet for the pivot/lateral move at above 40mm/application. We typically have evaporation rates of 12+mm/day. Roughly 25%application losses. Evaporation does not cease at night.
I’m not as aware of rice growing, but the soils are picked specifically for their impermiability. Despite the high evaporation, the rice growers are the most water efficient growers in the world too.
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.
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, $1800
So lots of mutterings but little of substance from Slackass Green.
Any consideration of the relative merits or otherwise of seepage from a chanel MUST include its relevance to the volume of water that actually flows over that m2? Your site did no such thing.
You quote the official evaporation rate for Wagga Wagga but fail to deduct the annual rainfall to give the net evaporation loss. Unless, of course, you seriously believe that rain doesn’t fall on irrigation ditches.
You also seem to be blissfully ignorant of the fact that some of the “wasted” irrigation water actually provides valuable ecological services, being used by grasses, forbs and trees that in turn, supply habitat to native species. But of course, this is never counted by the green tight arses who regard all human impacts as negative and measure all irrigation water as an “extraction” from the ecosystem and refuse to recognise the connective significance of agricultural activities.
They don’t even appear able to comprehend the fact that Murray Cod actually like to live in irrigation chanels because the water levels, and therefore the food supply, is far more reliable than what had formerly been provided by the river itself. So the dumb turds do their little surveys in the river and conclude that the species is in decline. Nope, they just recognise a good ecological niche when they find one. Which is a lot more than can be said about the green bull$hiterati.
“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.
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.
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.