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Talk:Irrigation in Australia

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Scope

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As per Talk:Water supply in Australia - start to scope out

Also

  • History

--Golden Wattle talk 21:23, 18 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Related to water trading, we need an explanation of water rights, allocations, entitlements and processes to give the trading a context. It is possible to sell either a right or an allocation, I think. --Scott Davis Talk 22:23, 18 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]
In Western Australia Harvey Irrigation Scheme was officialy started in 1916, but was further developed during the latter part of the 1930's depression to take unemployed workers to dig and build the extensive irrigation channels in the district -SatuSuro 14:15, 6 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]
And I would never never ever use a travel website as a reference btw SatuSuro 21:54, 6 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

References

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--Golden Wattle talk 22:33, 18 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

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--Scott Davis Talk 00:00, 19 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Images

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Some free images

An aerial shot would be very handy but may be hard to source. I can get some photos of channels and perhaps some other infrastructure if needed

Some maps showing irrigation areas may also be useful.--Mattinbgn/ talk 00:22, 19 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Also,

random elements for inclusion.

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Both the extent of irrigation throughout Australia, and the methods used to distribute water through various irrigation regions, need further improvement.

Opportunistic vs developed irrigation areas

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Much irrigation in Australia is opportunistic, for example along the Darling anabranch, infrequent flood events see large operators capture opportunity flows which are stored onfarm and used until it runs out. Elsewhere the natural watercourses offer near continuous flows (eg eastern coast), or there are major irrigation schemes consisting of water retention (snowy scheme, hume weir, ord river) and artificial waterways (murrumbidgee irrigation area, murray irrigation area).

POW's

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POW's were used in extending irrigation distribution schemes. Don't have a source, but one of my previous landlords parents was bought here as a POW, worked on expanding canals connected to the Mulwala canal, and never went home (Italy).

Crop development

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Without irrigation crops such as rice, cotton (and tobacco?) would basically never have been introduced into Australia.

Harm minimisation techniques

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There are major groundwater evaporation systems in place to reduce the rate of rise of the water table around Dareton, New South Wales aiming to reduce the impact of irrigation on the water table. I'm pretty sure there are others in WA at least. Efforts are made to seal channels (using clay, during non-irrigaton times) beyond economic efficiency throughout NSW to reduce environmental impact of water distribution. In particularly leak-prone soils water distribution is via pipes but this is due to excessive (intolerably so) leakage. Garrie 11:20, 23 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

ABS info

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4610.0 - Water Account, Australia, 2004-05 is an imortant source of info for this article.--Golden Wattle talk 21:45, 4 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Water Trading

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A good overview of the current situation --Mattinbgn/ talk 05:33, 5 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

"The subsequent salt is used as a stockfeed"

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This is not a direct quote from the cited reference, but salt is not a stock feed... a supplement block maybe? It's a bit like saying you can live on vitamin pills alone. The wording in the reference is "Typically the salt was used in animal feeds. Investigation are continuing to examine higher value markets for this product." My uncle used to put dirt into stock feed because it was cheap and as long as there wasn't too much of it, the resultant mix was still palatable to livestock. That doesn't particularly make it a viable stockfeed though... From when I worked at Water Resources, Denilquin (1995) - much more of it was used as Bittens than anything else, and a little became Gypsum. But that was 11 years ago now....Garrie 03:47, 7 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Happy to change if I have misinterpreted the original source. If you wish to make additions please feel free to do so.--Mattinbgn/ talk 04:56, 7 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Storage areas / volumes

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I am suprised that no mention has been made of comparison between on-farm / on-site water storage and public storage (hume weir, snowy scheme, Minindee Lakes complex). Significant friction has arisen from the "interception" of surface water flows before they reach the river system, and the capacity of large operators (Tandau etc) to basically pump flood surges back to drought-like flows.

Although this doesn't cause/lead to drought, it does increase the impact of dry spells / reduce the broader beneficial impact of flood surges.

This is certainly significant for the Darling River and anabranch system.

I don't work in agricultural/natural resources sectors now so I don't have sources for the above...Garrie 03:55, 7 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

corporate entities / water trading bodies

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I don't know if similar entities exist in other states but in NSW there are groups such as Murray Irrigation who act similarly to Sydney Water, except they sell bulk water via channel infrastructure to farmers.

Does mention of these type of groups belong in Irrigiation in Australia, or is there a need for Irrigation in New South Wales etc? AFAIK, where individual irrigators pump directly from natural waterways they still deal directly with a "normal government department", although before the current dry spell this was also well on the way to becoming a state-owned corporation.

(Water rights are still held by individual landholders / irrigators, Murray Irrigation "just" deliver the water from the river to the farm - same in the MIA I understand). Garrie 04:10, 7 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I know Mildura has the First Mildura Irrigation Trust (FMIT), which acts as you've described, selling bulk water via channels to farmers. -- Longhair\talk 06:59, 7 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I have created Murray Irrigation Area, largely via copy/paste from Murrumbidgee Irrigation Area - but if this article lists every irrigation area in Australia will the lists dominate the text?
Should there be a section Irrigation areas which says
Main article: List of irrigation areas in Australia
There are incorporated irrigation areas throught Australia which each have independant bodies representing or trading water with irrigators.
On the list page they could be listed by state with a summary table indicating size in hectares, date incorporated / commenced operation, and current water trading organisation maybe?
Garrie 20:38, 7 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Murray Irrigation shuts off water to farms

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even though it's their job to sell water to irrigators when there's no water there's no water. story here So even Australia's biggest river system isn't droughtproof for irrigation. Garrie 04:14, 7 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Environment

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I think the environment section is well on the way - but is it missing the general theory that pretty much, irrigated areas in Australia were traditionally low groundwater regeneration areas, which if anything had a net reduction in the water table due to the vegetation (even native Australian grasses will over time have more impact on rising water tables, than seasonal annual cropping eg rice, cotton, wheat - either irrigated or dryland)?

But it is an excellent start and I wouldn't argue for removing any of it! Garrie 02:39, 9 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

NSW Irrigator's Council as a source

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In New South Wales, irrigated agriculture accounts for nearly 35% of production using just 1.5% of agricultural land.NSW Irrigators' Council

I like the statistic... but I feel that it is difficult to trust the NSW Irrigators' Council to provide that statistic for an encyclopedia article. It's akin to getting informaton from the NRMA supporting widespread public support for removing tramlines from Sydney (see Trams in Sydney ) I would have thought the MIA and Murray Irrigation areas combined occupy more than 1.5% of the state, let alone 1.5% of the agricultural land. Garrie 05:40, 15 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

From the ABS,
An estimated 64.4 million hectares or 80% of land area in NSW was used for agricultural activity in 2004-05. Around 10% (7.7 million hectares) was used for cropping
I'm not sure if agricultural land includes land used for cropping...
From [1]
IRRIGATION WATER USE - Despite this fall in the number of agricultural establishments irrigating, the total area of irrigated land remained steady at 2.4 million hectares.
2.4 (million ha) is 3.6% of 64.4 (million ha) so the NSW Irrigator's Council is under-reporting on irrigated land, which makes the land appear more productive.
Garrie 03:07, 16 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Production Section

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The information in the production section seems a little biased towards some industries. I think the article could benefit from similar headings on Dairy (by far the largest water user), livestock and sugar

Also a table on the total water used by particular industries. GILDog (talk) 23:50, 11 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Are there any threats to irrigation?

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For example, is anything using water that can be used on irrigation? Is anything competing with agriculture for water?--Ababcdc1 (talk) 08:24, 9 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Never mind, I see that there is already an article for that called Water security in Australia--Ababcdc1 (talk) 08:42, 13 November 2015 (UTC).[reply]
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