In article ,
Ross McKay wrote:

Good read Ross. Thank you. There must be a series of dams to store the
rains, so that a farmer can tell whether it is a good year for annuals
or not.

Front page of the local paper heralds the planets human population as
reaching the 7 billion level. There is certain to be tension between
resources and needs.

To me it just seems so bloody damn stupid that we have supported these
profane wars, which cause people to hate us, when a fraction of the
money would have given clean water and sanitation to the worlds
underprivileged (previously colonized), and they would have loved us.

On Fri, 30 Jul 2010 14:42:16 +1000, "David Hare-Scott" wrote:

[...] So we have the absurdities of
growing rice and cotton in dryland areas by massive (and wasteful)
irrigation and more water being allocated from the Murray-Darling than is
actually available except in flood years.

Agreed for cotton given the overproduction of it and its thirst
comparable to other fibre plants (e.g. hemp). Rice (and maize grown in
the same general area) is a little different, I reckon. Or at least, it
has the potential to be so, given an assumption of a fair price for
irrigation water. This is because it can be planted opportunistically,
e.g. when there's good flows in the rivers, and just not planted when
there isn't.

Contrast that with all the MIS-backed plantations of fruit and nut
trees, and grape vines, along the Murray-Darling system -- trees that
require water to keep them going and thus demand water even when there
is a drought. That was one of the big issues during the latest drought,
with lots of water bought up by (tax avoiding) MIS plantations and
little remaining for anyone else, leading to lots of fruit trees being
grubbed out or bulldozed.

Malcolm Turnbull (yes, him!) covered this quite well (for a mainstream
politician) on Insiders some time back:

http://www.abc.net.au/insiders/conte...7/s1856319.htm

[...]
BARRIE CASSIDY: Does the plan adequately address the obvious issue that
Australian farmers are growing crops in the wrong places?

MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well, that's not actually true, Barrie. In fact, that
statement is obviously wrong. Let me explain. Everybody says that the
conventional wisdom is that you shouldn't grow rice in Australia, you
shouldn't grow cotton. Now, there are areas where there is over-
allocation and there are areas where cotton is grown and rice is grown
that there are -- it's no doubt over-allocation. But if everybody grew
fruit trees, or almonds or olives, grew permanent crops, which obviously
have a higher yield per megalitre of water, we would be in a terrible
jam because the key thing to understand about our rivers is that the
flows are very volatile. And so if all of your plantings are permanent
plantings how do you sustain them during the dry years? You need to have
a mix of crops and you need to have annual crops so that when there's
water around you plant them, and when there isn't you don't plant.

You see, the problem we face in the basin at the moment is not with rice
and cotton because it's not being planted because there isn't any water.
The problem we face is keeping alive the permanent plantings, the
horticulture which need to get a drink whether it's a dry year or a wet
year.

BARRIE CASSIDY: But isn't the problem that rice and cotton is grown in
areas where there are water shortages, quite regularly?

MALCOLM TURNBULL: But that's well, OK, I'll start again. Because our
water is volatile, because some years you get a lot of water and some
years you don't get any, it's important to have annual crops that you
can plant opportunistically when there is water, but you don't have to
plant, you don't need to plant when there isn't any water. If all of our
crops were horticulture, were permanent plantings, then in dry years we
would have an even bigger problem than we do now.

So you see, if you go to Deniliquin where they grow a lot of rice, there
is very little rice being plant this had year, virtually none. Why is
that? Because there isn't any water. You go down to Mildura where it's
mostly horticulture. The same trees and vines are there, Barrie, in this
very dry year as would be in a wet year and they will be struggling, if
this coming season is as bad as the last one, to get enough water to
keep those trees and vines alive. So annual crops are a very important
part of the mix.

You see, you've got to recognise that the key, sort of, feature of our
river system is its variability. The range of the ratio between high
flows and low flows on the Murray, over since records began, 100 odd
years ago is 30 1. So you could get, in one year, 30 times more inflows
than you got the year before. And that means you have to have an
agricultural mix that meets that.

BARRIE CASSIDY: Well, at the risk of having you to start again, when
Senator Bill Heffernan says that cotton and rice is better suited to the
north where it does rain then he's on the wrong track?

MALCOLM TURNBULL: No, that's not what I'm saying at all. Bill is right
if I mean, I know - Bill Heffernan's a very good friend of mine, and I
talk about water all the time. The point that Bill is making is there is
a great deal of water availability in northern Australia and there are a
number of crops, water intensive crops, that can be grown up there that
where -- in circumstances or in situations where there isn't a lot of
agriculture at the moment. Certainly we will have more agriculture in
the north as time goes on because there's more water available there,
but that doesn't mean you shouldn't have any annual crops in the Murray
Darling Basin. Because if I get back to that fundamental point if --
you'd really need to have a mix of crops and it's not for the government
to tell farmers what crops to plant. I can tell you, farmers have enough
trouble making the right decisions with all of their experience and
insight. The idea that you'd have some central crop selection committee
sitting in Canberra telling people what to grow is just too ludicrous
for words.

BARRIE CASSIDY: Yeah, I suppose not a question of forcing them but to
encourage them.

MALCOLM TURNBULL: Barrie, the world, the market encourages them. Farmers
change their crop decisions all the time. They react to markets. You
know, the do you really think that a group of politicians and
bureaucrats are better able to determine what to grow than farmers,
people who've spent their whole lives working on it, who've got access
to all of the science and meteorological information? I mean, come on,
really, this is a it's a crazy idea.

You've got to let farmers make their decisions, let water trade, let the
market sort it ought, and have a mix of crops that reflects the
variability of our weather.

We live in Australia, we don't live you know, we live in Australia, we
are the lands of droughts and flooding rains. We get bad droughts, then
we get floods and you've got to have water management practices and
agricultural practices that reflect that and if you don't you'll get
into a great deal more trouble than even the problems we have at the
moment, believe me.

[... continued]

The sooner this water is given a
sensible value the sooner this kind of abuse will be gone.
[...]

That, and removing the silly tax subsidies affored to MIS, which greatly
distort the agriculture scene by encouraging corporations to establish
land, water and nutrient hungry plantations that have little to no
chance of turning a profit in their own right and exist simply as tax
scams for the filthy rich (and those who'd like to be).
--
- Billy
"Fascism should more properly be called corporatism because it is the
merger of state and corporate power." - Benito Mussolini.
http://www.democracynow.org/2010/7/2/maude
http://english.aljazeera.net/video/m...515308172.html