Australian Farmers Trade Water

By Tanalee Smith, The Associated Press

SYDNEY, Australia - For farmer Malcolm Holm, water now is just like a new shovel or tractor - he has to buy it.

The amount of water he is allowed to take from nearby Murrumbidgee River has dwindled to nothing for the past three years because of Australia’s crippling drought. And so, except for rain he can catch and store himself, he needs to buy water for his 1,000 acres at Finley in New South Wales state, where he grows crops to feed his 600 dairy cows.

“It’s no different to buying a ton of grain or a ton of fertilizer,” Holm said. “It’s just another commodity.”

In the world’s driest inhabited continent, there is simply not enough water to go around, and households, cities, industries and agriculture all demand their share from stressed reservoirs and rivers. So Australia’s irrigation planting sector relies on a unique trading system to make the most of every drop.

What began as a localized trade within states is now an active national market that shares water along hundreds of miles of river systems used by thousands of farmers. And with the drought, the trading of water is picking up pace.

“Trading activity is certainly strengthening over previous years,” said Mark Siebentritt, operations manager of Waterfind, the nation’s largest water broker. Water is traded mostly through independent brokers who bring sellers and buyers together and who know the myriad rules in the heavily regulated market. “During drought we’re seeing a lot of water moving around.”

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Source: RedOrbit

Largest Aquifer in the US is Running Dry

Agriculture in the Great Plains is heavily dependent on groundwater supplies from the Ogallala Aquifer. Over 70% of the total value of crop production in the area comes from irrigated acreage overlying the aquifer, which encompasses 174,000 square miles and under lies parts of eight states: Texas, New Mexico, Oklahoma, Colorado, Kansas, Nebraska, South Dakota, and Wyoming (Alley, Reilly, and Franke).

The abundant supply of feed grains produced with water from the Ogallala Aquifer fuels the livestock, meatpacking, and ethanol industries. Additionally, the area produces approximately 32% of the national production of cotton (National Agricultural Statistics Service [NASS]). Many of these industries are vertically integrated so that changes in one industry will impact the others, having a ripple effect on the economy. The unfortunate consequence of this integration is that regional economies have become precariously water dependent.

The Ogallala Aquifer has very little recharge and is essentially a finite resource. In portions of the Ogallala Aquifer, up to 40% of the predevelopment storage has already been depleted (Feng and Segarra), and the overdraft continues to take place. Current aquifer decline rates foretell the eventual demise of irrigated agriculture and conversion to dryland production, which may have a significant long-term negative economic impact on the area.

Faced with this situation, policymakers, state water managers, and other stakeholders are investigating conservation policy alternatives aimed at reducing current levels of groundwater consumption and extending the economic life of the aquifer. In order to extend the economic life of the aquifer and maintain the economic base of the region, both voluntary and mandated policy intervention may need to be considered.

Source: Economic Efficiency of Short-Term Versus Long-Term Water Rights Buyouts by Wheeler, Erin Golden, Bill; Johnson, Jeffrey; Peterson, Jeffrey

Drought forces farms to absorb higher fuel costs

NEW JERSEY-Months of drought at southern New Jersey farms have required more intense irrigation that preserved crops but inflated fuel bills in an expensive year for diesel.

A “weather and crop bulletin” from the federal Agriculture Department showed southern New Jersey sites received, from March through August, as little as 70 percent of the average rainfall. The report warned sweet corn, tomatoes, peppers and squash are among the crops affected by the resulting heat stress.

Fruits and vegetables detach prematurely if temperatures are high enough, no matter what a farmer does, but Cumberland County farmer Tom Sheppard said the heat didn’t reach that point this year.

It’s a measure of farmers’ complex relationship with droughts that the weekend soaking from Tropical Storm Hanna wasn’t eagerly anticipated. Flooding can be a greater concern than wilting.

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Source: Press Of Atlantic City

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California can grow more food AND take less water from the delta

We can do more with less. Nations in drier climates around the world and forward-thinking farmers in California already are using less water to grow more crops - with greater profits. It is time for California to implement economic and environmental policies that encourage farmers to use water more efficiently, both for the good of the environment and to sustain a robust agricultural sector.

The Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta is in a state of crisis, both as an ecosystem and as a water supply. Almost half of the water used for California’s agriculture comes from rivers that once flowed to the delta, and more than half of Californians rely on water conveyed through the delta for at least some of their water supply. It is imperative that we recognize what both the recent court decisions and the scientists are saying: We’re taking too much water from the delta.

Given that agriculture accounts for about 80 percent of delta water consumption, reducing withdrawals from the delta will inevitably affect farmers. We have two options, two very different paths to reduced agricultural water use. One is to choose to let events evolve as they will, which may lead to growing disruptions in the agricultural sector, uncertainty about the reliability of food production, and the weakening of a vital component of our traditional economy. The other is to work toward a carefully planned and efficient agricultural sector, long-term protections for land and water resources, and the production of more high-valued crops grown with efficient irrigation systems that are effectively managed to respond to weather and crop conditions.

By changing what crops are grown and how we grow them, the report concludes that we can achieve substantial water savings, ranging from 0.6 million to 3.4 million acre-feet of water annually, and for far less than building new, centralized water storage. In fact, if we look at water savings in “dam equivalents,” the scenarios examined in the study could save as much water as three to 20 dams the size of those being proposed.

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Source: San Francisco Chronicle

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China: Saving every drop of water to nourish the corn belt

On a routine stroll in her 11.2 hectares of cornfields one recent morning, farmer Cui Shulan heaved a sigh of relief. This year, she will get a bumper crop of corn.

“Nature has treated us kindly this year,” said the 61-year-old farmer from Dongling village in Jilin province. “We’ve had ample sunshine and adequate rainfall. If all goes well, we could get a yield of 17,500 kg in the fall.”

Like millions of small farmers who eke out a living on small patches of land, Cui’s fortunes are dependent on Mother Nature.

“Crop plantation in Jilin is still at the mercy of weather,” Cui said simply. “One year we have a bumper harvest, while another very poor one.”

Despite being the world’s largest agricultural country with the bulk of its population - 56 percent - in rural areas, China’s farming practices have changed very little throughout the centuries. The country’s rapid urbanization and economic growth in the last few decades have only widened the gap between the rural and urban economies.

The increasing gap in income between city and country has prompted the central government to focus more attention on rural areas, and on agricultural development.

This is especially important for a province like Jilin, which is home to one of the world’s top three corn production belts, the other two being in the United States and Ukraine.

In Jilin, the main factor that has hampered agricultural development is lack of water due to a poor farmland irrigation system. Although the province has had good crop yields for five consecutive years, it is still beset by frequent natural disasters.

“We can raise our grain production capacity if we can improve water conservation,” said Su Zheng of the water resources department of the Jilin province.

Cui, whose village on the edge of the Songnen plain is one of the country’s major corn producers, agreed: “Without a good water conservancy project, droughts and floods still threaten our crops every year. Due to a severe drought last year, our yield was only a little more than 11,500 kg.”

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Source: The China Daily

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Green Tip for Farmers: Use Cover Crops

Planting cover crops on the exposed soil of harvested cropland is one example of a simple yet very effective conservation practice.

Cover crops are usually planted in late summer or early fall soon after harvest is completed. Small grains like oats, wheat or rye are the common species planted. In spring, the over-winter cover crop residue is either tilled prior to planting, or in some cases the spring crop is no-till planted directly into the cover crop residues.

The establishment of a seasonal cover crop on exposed soil protects the environment by helping to reduce soil erosion and surface water pollution, and it also ties up unused nutrients so they cannot leach through the soil and pollute groundwater. Cover crops also provide benefits to the farmer by increasing soil organic matter, by providing natural weed suppression and by improving soil moisture management.

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Source: Daily Citizen

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Growing more with less water

EAGLE COUNTY — Crawling through the pastures at the Albertson Cattle Company in Burns, high above the Colorado River and on the edge of the Flat Tops Wilderness, is a 900-foot long sprinkler system that looks like a giant robotic caterpillar.

The caterpillar takes it time, slowly inching through about 80 acres of grass on big black wheels. Dozens of spray nozzles hang off its belly, and a large water gun is perched on its head. This crawling irrigation system is designed to apply the perfect amount of water so the grass can grow, be cut down and turned to hay without waste. It all works by gravity.

Just two years ago, these 80 acres of pasture were regularly flooded with inches of water to get the grass growing. When you flood fields, a lot more water is used than what the grass actually needs to grow.

Now, two “gravity-fed pivots,” or crawling sprinkler systems, do the irrigating. These “pivots” use about 70 percent less water than flooding but end up producing more hay than ever. “The productivity is getting close to double what we used to do,” said Kevin Wahlert, a rancher at Albertson Cattle Company.

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Source: Vail Daily

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