The world’s fresh water supplies are almost fully exploited.Almost al, 97 per cent, of the world’s water is salt. Of the fresh water in the world, two thirds is locked up as ice and snow (the cryosphere – to you and me, kid!). Globally, three quarters of the water that is used is used by agriculture. India, China and the United States, use more fresh water than is available. The water level in those nation’s aquifers is falling as a result.The current food crisis has come about largely as a result as the shortfall in available water begins to impact on the cost of irrigation.Â
LUCY SKUTHORP in The Land A new-look Senate is cutting its teeth debating plans to fix the Lower Lakes in South Australia, with those holding the balance of power pushing for an emergency inquiry in a bid to transfer significant volumes of water from storages in the northern Murray Darling Basin. Wasting no time to Continue Reading →
The figures come amid renewed calls for irrigation licences to be bought back in order to save South Australia’s Lower Lakes, and bickering between the farmers in the Basin States as to who was to blame for the over-use of water.
And while the northern Basin irrigators have been the target of the South Australian residents and green groups, the ABS statistics show that SA irrigators actually increased their water use in 2006-07 while extractions further north decreased.
From The Land
The Federal Government’s Murray-Darling Basin water buyback scheme is heading for a squall in Queensland.
Conservation groups and downstream water users are welcoming the Federal push to buy $350 million of water out of the upper end of the Murray-Darling system, but in shires like Balonne, which has developed an economy deeply reliant on irrigation, the prospect of losing water is catastrophic.
Queensland Nationals Senator, Barnaby Joyce, is based at St George.
“If there’s a wholesale water buyback without any socio-economic impact studies done, it has the potential to deliver certain towns already hit by drought into poverty for perpetuity,†Mr Joyce said.
The Federal Government’s irrigation water buyback will return just 10 megalitres of flow to the Murray River this year, according to media reports today.
The Commonwealth spent $47 million last year buying back water entitlements from irrigators throughout the Basin.
In May Water Minister Penny Wong trumpeted the program, saying it would return 34 gigalitres to the system.
But as FarmOnline reported at the time, the headline figure did not reflect the fact that the drought and reduced water allocations had decimated the actual amount of water currently available under the bought-back licences.
The full 34GL claimed by the buybacks would only be realised in a flood year, with a Government report indicating that in an average year 23GL would be returned to the river.
From The LandÂ
Federal and state governments have bought 2436 hectares of a cotton farm in the Macquarie Marshes and all its water licences in an effort to salvage the stricken wetland.
The farm, Pillicawarrina Station, was allowed to develop into a cotton-growing enterprise in the 1980s despite its location in the heart of the internationally-recognised wetland.
As with much of the Murray-Darling Basin, the wetland is in crisis.
The land will be added to the Macquarie Marshes nature reserve system, increasing its size by about 10pc, while 8658 megalitres of water will go back to the environment, ending Pillicawarrina’s days as an irrigation cotton farm.
Locals say the farm would have cost at least $10 million.
From The Land
 
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| The Southern Oscillation Index (SOI) is currently ‘neutral’ – a strong and consistently positive SOI, consistently above about +6 over a two month period, is related to a high probability of above long-term average rainfall for many areas especially in eastern Australia. |
It may not grab headlines, but for croppers across south-eastern Australia, forecasts of average rain patterns throughout the spring are good enough.
With solid July rain totals in many areas, an ‘average’ spring rainfall would be enough for a good winter harvest, to allow most grain farmers some chance at average yields.
With booming prices, that would be a start to replenishing depleted coffers.
After the nightmarish Bureau of Meteorology (BOM) reports in June which suggested a sharp swing towards a markedly drier than average spring, the most recent BOM rain forecast has predicted average conditions for much of south-eastern Australia.
The bureau said the pattern of seasonal rainfall odds across south-eastern Australia is a result of a continued strong warming trend, in the central and south eastern Indian Ocean, off the coast of Western Australia, and a warming trend over the equatorial Pacific.