About Farms, Rivers and Markets
The Project is proposed by Uniwater, a joint research initiative of the University of Melbourne and Monash University. These two major research institutions will work in collaboration with National ICT Australia and the Murray-Darling Freshwater Research Centre. The Project uses the Broken River in the Goulburn Valley to develop new systems for managing surface and groundwater resources. In direct response to the National Water Initiative, the Project’s interdisciplinary program will create opportunities to ‘do more with less water’. The use of new technology will enable operational innovations to improve level of service, reduce losses and boost efficiency.
The Project takes a whole-of-system approach, encompassing the three key perspectives:
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Farms – irrigation water as part of the production system,
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Rivers and groundwater – managed together to meet environmental and production needs
- Markets – greater sharing of information to promote choice, innovation and efficiency
Aim of Farms, Rivers and Markets
To identify:
- More flexible, profitable, environmentally-sustainable and risk-attuned agricultural production systems, making best use of the range of sources of water - groundwater, river water, storage, recycled water and rainfall - according to security, quality and price
- More detailed environmental objectives for groundwater and surface water in space and time, for example, where and when low flows are required for the survival of larval native fish
- A detailed understanding of the water balance and flow conditions in the river, including the exchange between ground and surface water and the water quality implications of such exchange.
And to consider these elements in combination to:
- Determine which more flexible water products and services best meet the needs of both farmers and the environment, sometimes serving more than one purpose with the same water and sometimes involving trade-offs
- Assess the opportunities to deliver these water products and services reliably and cost effectively, enabled by real-time measurement and control
- Design market, pricing and governance mechanisms to promote choices that will benefit all stakeholders; and support such choices with information and a fair sharing of costs and benefits
- Evaluate the implications of new water management arrangements, in terms of their contribution to balanced progress on economic, environmental and social goals.
Key Outcomes
A major outcome of this Project will be to identify where the best ‘value’ can be extracted from investments, made together. These outcomes will be transferable to other farming areas and catchments, and the Project includes dialogue and evaluation steps throughout to ensure that these wider interests are catered for.
Using the Broken catchment as an example (and excluding the 44GL water saving commitment to the Living Murray Initiative from the decommissioning of Lake Mokoan), the investment case for the Project rests on demonstrating individual and collective gains in farm production, water supply and environment.
Benefits
Benefits to farmers include:
- Increasing their confidence and willingness to co-invest (the opportunity to develop more robust investment cases with higher returns may increase private co-investment from around $90m to $135m over ten years)
- Obtaining a higher return from investment on-farm through advances in whole-of-farm planning incorporating more diverse and resilient enterprises and enterprise mixes (for example a mixed production system on a dairy farm has been found to increase profitability in a dry year by 40%; conservatively, a 10% profit increase across farm enterprises in the Broken catchment would be valued at $5m per annum)
- Reducing on-farm environmental impacts and their costs by better utilisation of all sources of water
- Providing tools, data and demonstrations to support investment decisions and ensure they are capable of delivering the expected returns (conservatively, if 20% of $180m investment on-farm performs below expectations, the loss in expected return would be valued at $7m per annum)
Benefits to water and environment managers include:
- Recapturing operating losses and unaccounted for water through better knowledge, tools for real-time control (current figures do not close the water balance, but recoverable losses are estimated to lie between 40 and 80 GL in the average year; recovering 20GL through smarter operations would be valued at $7m per annum)
- Co-scheduling water for dual purpose use allowing the same water to be used more than once and effectively increasing the amount of water available (assuming 20GL can be co-scheduled, including better use of on-farm storage and major diversion pumps, the additional use of the water would be valued at $7m per annum)
- Better definition and more reliable meeting of in-stream environmental targets
- Real-time information and control as an improved service to farmers, allowing greater price differentiation of water products and ‘pay for service
Benefits to policy-makers and planners include:
- Providing more detailed criteria for the ranking of investments
- Pilot sites for major investments in AWRIS and NWADP1 (investments totalling $1bn will be made more efficient – estimated value $5m gained from opportunity to share pilot)
- Critical design parameters and investment case for measurement and control infrastructure