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Irrigation is worth $9–$11 billion a year at the farm gate and
maybe five times that in the shops; along the food chain it helps
keep half a million Australians in work. It manages two million
hectares and roughly two thirds of our available freshwater. It is
highly efficient in what it does – turning water into good food
and fibre. In the last drought it cut its water use by 43 per cent,
while cities cut theirs by just one per cent. But because it consists
of a gaggle of regional industries and jurisdictions prone to
argue among themselves, it lacks political influence, a national
vision, and has no effective voice. This makes it easy meat for
government razor gangs, populist politicians and self-seeking
bureaucracies.
Northern Victorian Federal Member for Murray Dr Sharman
Stone is one who is deeply concerned as spur lines off the main
irrigation channels are shut down and channels ploughed in,
while local dairy and fruit manufacturers downsize. “This socalled
‘Foodbowl Modernisation Project’ was set up to justify
piping farm water to Melbourne during the drought.” Sharman
explains. “The project was so ill-conceived that a damning State
Ombudsman’s report saw the agency dismantled and the CEO
resign. But the project lives on now managed by the similarly
inept State-owned Goulburn Murray Water Authority, which is
on track to ‘reduce the infrastructure footprint... by 50 per cent’.
This will halve the local irrigation system by 2015,” she warns.
At federal level, Sharman adds, the Commonwealth
Environmental Water Holder is also targeting food producers’
water in the Murray Darling Basin, in what she describes as ‘a
non-scientific raid aimed at pleasing urban green voters’.
Similarly, in Queensland and NSW, farmers in key foodbowl
regions like the Liverpool Plains and Darling Downs are up in
arms over state governments apparently determined to hand
their water resources to coal seam gas, coal and other resource
companies in search of a quick profit – potentially trading off
centuries of reliable food production for a few years of cheap
energy.
Australians need to understand that the real victims of this
process are not so much farmers, who can sell their water and
land and walk away – though most do not want to. The real
victims are 22+ million Australian consumers who will face
increasingly erratic and high food prices, sudden shortages and a
growing assault on their health due to the offshoring of our food
supply. And, of course, the taxpayers who will inevitably be asked
to pay billions to rebuild and restore food production when the
penny finally drops, the public gets angry and governments are
forced to backtrack.
The Bruntland definition of sustainability is handing the
country to your kids in the same, or better, condition than you
received it. In the case of food production, and especially irrigated
food production, this will not happen in Australia under current
policies. We will pass on, at best, a brow-beaten, downsized, deskilled
and demoralised system at a time when global food crises
are multiplying and prices soaring.
Australia has enough water for all its food and export needs,
to protect and sustain its native landscapes and to embark
on new industries in aquaculture, algae culture and irrigation
potentially worth $30 to $40 billion – but to do that we need,
above all, good science, technology and education to redouble
water use efficiency and second, policies which foster sustainable
water development and investment.
We should be building low-loss distribution systems (that
do not require half the present network to be shut down). We
should be recycling up to 100 per cent of our urban water. No
Australian city or frivolous user should be allowed to touch
food’s supply of water. We should bank water by recharging our
aquifers nationwide, plan mosaic irrigation in the north and seek
to double productivity in the southern irrigation industry – instead
of crushing it. We should share best practice and innovative
water management the length and breadth of the land. We
should build a billion dollar export sector in sustainable water
knowhow and technology, like the Israelis.
The Australians of the 19th and 20th centuries built our
modern irrigation sector to sustain the nation in its growth. In
a world where food supplies will become increasingly scarce,
expensive and unreliable as it surges toward 10 billion ravenous
global consumers, the impact of our own neglect of this vital area
will be borne by our children and grandchildren.
What sort of parents, indeed what sort of Australians, does
that make us
1
Julian Cribb is a Canberra-based science and agriculture writer, and
author of ‘The Coming Famine’ (CSIRO Publishing 2010).
This article was originally published in The Canberra Times on October 5.
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20 — The Australian Cottongrower October–November 2012