Australian Drought Worsening - Farmers Face Possible Irrigation Cutoff To Provide Water To Cities

[hatrack]

Australians should pray for rain, because if substantial rainfall does not come in the next month the Government will ban irrigation in the country’s agricultural heartland so that there is enough to drink, the Prime Minister said today. John Howard’s warning heralded a dramatic increase in food prices and the prospect that tens of thousands of farmers could see their crops fail.

Amid the worst drought in the nation’s history, Mr Howard said an expert panel had advised the Government that it had no choice but to turn off the water irrigation systems in the vast Murray-Darling basin in eastern Australia, an area about four times the size of the United Kingdom. Its 55,000 farmers supply virtually all of Australia’s stone and citrus fruits, vegetables, cotton and rice. It is also the location of many of the nation’s vineyards.

It is expected that food costs in Australia will begin to rise immediately, and there were predictions that scores of farmers would be forced off their land.

Mr Howard said that only the unlikely event of huge rains within the next six weeks would replenish the depleted Murray-Darling river system, Australia’s largest inland water source. The five years of drought have already devastated many small towns as farm incomes have shrunk but Mr Howard said the experts’ report made clear the situation was now “unprecedentedly dangerous”. If water supplies were not shut off to farmers, he said, it would be impossible to guarantee that people in inland towns and cities would have enough water to drink or wash.

EDIT

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/article1678637.ece

[phantom power]

1. I don't have a big-picture of Australia, but it seems as though...

this is going to be a major continent-scale crisis for Australia in the next few years, if not sooner. Clearly, it's already a crisis for the farmers who are putting guns to their heads, but I'm thinking in terms of the "mass-migration" and "famine" kind of crisis.

[babylonsister]

2. That's frightening; what happens when there is no food left?

Devastating.

[GliderGuider]

3. A canary with an Australian accent in the global coal mine

I feel like I'm peering 20 years into the future. This is what the beginning of a drought-induced famine looks like.

[Zachstar]

4. This can be helped some.

If people over there can totally wake up to the situation and rationed their water use.

I already try to wash as quickly (and throughly) as possible because I know what the waste is costing. There is no need for a water sucking bath when a good shower will do. The car can go unwashed for a few months the engine isn't going to die because you diddn't spend your weekend dumping cleaning chemicals and tons of water on it.

--------

As for the food problem. We have seen huge losses in the United States due to the cold snap and bee killing cell phones. It seems like we are railroading into 2008 being known as the starving times for the poor. Expect Prices to skyrocket. With the huge bee losses and skyrocketing popularity of cell phones (By now if you still use a cell phone for non contingency purposes you are an idiot and a contributer to a multitude of problems in my view) You can expect 2008 to see similar and likely worse crop failure until we find a way to sorta adapt to the rapidly changing climate.

I highly encourage everyone to plant your back yard, farm, whatever you legally can. You don't have to have a green thumb to help take a little pressure off the situation. I plan to work my rear end off to get as much land ready as possible to grow a large 08 supply of food we don't have to buy from a store.

I'm not some env wackball, I am just being realistic. Nothing will change fast enough to stop this crap before ALOT of starvation and suffering. I suggest you don't stick around doing nothing while waiting to see if things fix up. Grow your food!

[XemaSab]

5. It's stupid to cut off water to orchards and vineyards

This is a problem farmers in Washington state have been wrangling with. If you cut off the water to a tree, you're not just killing this year's crop, you're killing crops for the next decade.

I'm usually not in favor of putting farmers over urban users, but in the western US there is often little common sense when it comes to water. Why not just cut off water to the cotton and rice farmers, raise the price of water to everyone else a little bit, and use the proceeds to buy off the cotton and rice farmers so they don't leave their land? :shrug:

Also, how many people live inland in Australia? Are we talking millions of people or a few tens of thousands?

(Australia is something I am ignorant about. Please educate me about this more if I am saying something dumb).

[depakid]

6. The trouble is that rain's not falling inland,

so it's not getting into the catchment basins.