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OT The Murray-Darling Basin Plan
terryc wrote:
0tterbot wrote: any irrigators who are growing (for example) wine grapes for export probably should just shut up right now. I think you will find that that is a major part of the water problem in NSW. The allocated water was not being fully utilised in NSW, so the NSW government sold it as high security water(first call) to people taking advantage of the exceptional tax lurks given by the government during the howard years(?) to the wine industry, which is basically all export industry. A major part of the problem is that water was administered by the States separately and historically they have over-allocated it, that is the allocations are so large that it is only in flood years that irrigators get 100%. This has been exacerbated in the last decade which has been very dry compared to the base periods when the optimistic allocations were made. Rice at least is a staple food crop. also, All/most of the rice growing areas were established by the government to provide food security. That may have been true in the middle 20th century, however most of it is now exported, production is quite seasonal but in good years we are big exporters of rice. Also on the scale of dollars earned per meglitre of irrigation water consumed rice is very low. Not to mention that the excess water that percollates away from rice fields in the MIA contributes to raising the water table and hence salinity problems. We have a glut of cheap rice from overseas as global transport is cheap, cheap, cheap, cheap. But it will not be so for very long. David |
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