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Third and final part of this series addressing 2 key questions: - (i) Have we gained sufficient knowledge and wisdom from a century of unsustainable irrigation practices in southern Australia to do things differently in the future? (ii) Is Northern Australia really the agricultural utopia that some in the community argue, and do the potential rewards justify the risks to our largely pristine and biodiverse tropical river basins?
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Developing Australia’s Tropical Water Resources – Part 3
Australia already produces enough food to feed 60 million people,
of which we export almost two thirds. Australia is number ten
among net food exporting countries in the world. We have more
than enough food to feed ourselves for many decades, if not
centuries, to come.
We have learned much from the environmental mistakes made over
the past century in developing profitable agricultural production in
southern Australia, the Murray-Darling Basin in particular.
Agricultural productivity and efficiency are continuously improving
and, at the same time, water is being recovered for the environment
to remedy past impacts on river and floodplain ecosystems.
In theory, it should be possible to expand irrigated agriculture in
the north in a resource-sustainable way while avoiding significant
ecological damage.
The tough questions remaining, however, are these:
1. We may have the knowledge, but do we have the political will to
fund and implement agricultural practices in the tropical north in a
sustainable manner, or will northern Australia simply repeat the
mistakes made in the Murray-Darling Basin and elsewhere?
2. Even if the political will exists, are the apparently modest economic
gains from irrigated agricultural expansion in northern Australia
worth the risk of losing the cultural, tourism and other benefits of
such pristine and biodiverse tropical lands and river systems?
As has been noted by other authorities, there is probably a far better
case for driving greater irrigation efficiencies and productivity in
southern Australia than for further developing the north. Here there
are already well established food production and market-delivery
systems, and the scale of agricultural production is an order of
magnitude greater than anything that appears viable in Northern
Australia. And to be frank, in the south the ecological damage has
already been done and is now, if slowly, being repaired.
Read more water resources management articles at
http://insidewater.org
