Water infrastructure | Australian officials explore irrigation projects to mitigate effects of future droughts
SYDNEY, Australia (Reuters) — The Australian government is looking at investing in nearly 30 irrigation schemes and reigniting a long-stalled program of dam building to combat growing water shortages that constrain agricultural production.
The country is a leading producer and exporter of crops such as wheat, sugar and cotton, but production faces risks from prolonged drought across much of the Australian east coast.
Australia had previously floated ambitious plans to use dams and irrigation to develop marginal land in the outback, but financial and environmental constraints mean it has not built a major new dam in decades.
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According to a government policy paper, the amount of water available per capita from dams has fallen more than 20 percent since 1980 and is set to drop further.
Agriculture minister Barnaby Joyce said investment in water infrastructure must be prioritized, but the paper did not say how the new projects might be funded or give financial detail.
“Effective water infrastructure will be critical to the profitability and productivity of Australian agriculture into the future,” Joyce.
Australia is considering some level of investment in 28 potential projects, with six irrigation projects in Tasmania and Victoria seen as the most feasible within the next 12 months.
Longer term, the paper highlighted two potential dams in Queensland, which has suffered the biggest impact from recent dry weather, and sites in Western Australia and Victoria as possibilities, though less advanced than those further south.
“We had a big rise in the building of dams and that slowed because we basically built them in the areas that were feasible and we ran out of places that it was economically and hydrologically sensible to do so,” said Joshua Larsen, a hydrology expert at the University of Queensland.
Some of the new sites under consideration were previously considered marginal.
Tony Abbott promised to be the “infrastructure prime minister” when he was elected last year, but the government has also pledged to control spending as public finances have suffered from a slowdown in the mining sector.
“As a government, we will be putting some money on the table, and using that to shore -up some of these (dam) proposals,” Joyce said.
Some of the investment shortfall in agriculture has historically been met by foreign investment, but ownership of farmland by foreign investors is a sensitive issue in Australia.
For example, a Chinese-owned company has leased nearly 20,000 acres of land in Western Australia’s Kimberley area to grow sugar and plans to expand production following the development a dam.
The policy paper proposed greater scrutiny of foreign ownership through a register of land and water assets owned by non-Australian citizens.
Joyce, who was a leading critic of last year’s proposed acquisition of the country’s largest listed agribusiness GrainCorp by U.S. grain handler Archer Daniels Midland, defended the tougher scrutiny.
“As a nation, people want the overwhelming majority of farms to be held by Australian farming families,” he said.
“It is what makes us a nation and something that I am very passionate about.”
The government also proposed plans to unlock investment from pensions by exchanging money for partial equity in farms.
The focus on water security comes as Australia suffered the hottest year on record last year, and there have been forecasts for longer and more intense periods of hot weather.
The government paper also proposed giving farmers grants to help with the cost of expensive insurance protection against the effects of drought.
