Flooded Lower Murray farmers fight to save their livelihood
River Murray irrigators who suffered through the Millennium Drought more than a decade ago are now facing the other extreme, with some farms up to 2.5m under water.
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From devastating droughts to crippling floods, farmers on the flats of the Lower Murray are again fighting to keep their businesses alive.
Farming on the River Murray has been an exercise in extreme resilience for irrigators such as Joanne and Barry Pfeiffer at Murray Bridge, who once again find themselves at the mercy of extreme weather events which have derailed operations for the second time in 15 years.
The Pfeiffers have been irrigating on the Long Flat flood plains for more than 40 years and their resolve was tested by the Millennium Drought – from 2001 to 2009 – as the low rainfall and low inflows into the river left them without water.
Mrs Pfeiffer said before the drought there were more than 120 dairy operators from Mannum to Wellington and now about 17 farmers operated on the flood plains.
While others sold off and packed up, the drought was the catalyst for the Pfeiffers to adapt and get out of the dairy game in 2010 and begin to farm beef cattle and grow hay.
Now, their property is underwater and they have been left with no other option to sell stock as they prepare for 12 months, or longer, unable to run their farm.
With all their pasture lost, the Pfeiffers have been spending $1500 a day on feed for their stock with cattle in makeshift lots, forcing a decision to sell the livestock.
On January 7, the Long Flat levee bank breached and 135ha was under up to 2.5m of water within six hours.
Mrs Pfeiffer said the hard work that went into recovering from the drought and rehabilitating the flats had literally been washed away.
She said irrigators understood the risk in operating on flood plains but called for a better understanding of the history behind the development of farming land protected by levee banks.
“These were originally pulled together for soldier settlement – it was recognised that if they could tame the river back into the channel they would have these fertile swamps that they would be able to bring soldiers back and let them thrive,” she said.
“There is a history to these flats and a community behind them operating them – we should be protecting them.”
She said she was frustrated the Department for Environment and Water (DEW) did not engage in any reinforcement work to the Long Flat levee before the peak flows.
DEW infrastructure and operations director Sue Hutchings said the Long Flat levee crest was resheeted and the river side rebuilt to design specifications equivalent to 1974 flood levels in mid-2022.
“No further works were done on the levee in the lead up to the 2022 River Murray flood peak as DEW inspected all levees in the government-owned network and the recent work to this levee meant that no additional remedial works were required,” she said.
“While these levees provide some flood protection, they are not flood management levees in the same way that the levees surrounding Renmark and Paringa are.”
Flooded farms cause havoc for next generation
The flooded farmland has also halted growth in operations as the Pfeiffers recently entered a partnership with their daughter and her husband – Alex and Mark Westlake – to run sheep.
As next-generation farmers with a newborn baby, the Westlakes had been building their sheep farming operation before the floodwater caused chaos.
Mrs Westlake said times had been tough for the family as they worked around the clock, first to mitigate risk and then into damage control.
“Our livelihood sits under that water – we’ve done everything we thought we could do for ourselves to protect ourselves and our livestock,” she said.
“The week of the breach we spent days sandbagging in 45-degree heat trying to fill up the low spots of the levee bank.”
She said she wished more had been done to reinforce the levee and protect the land from complete inundation.
“We know that it is a flood plain and we accept that and we know that the river takes back what belongs to her, but there are so many things that are apart of that … we aren’t in denial that we are farming a flood plain, that’s why it’s highly productive important land” she said.
“We run a substantial enterprise here, we have over 2000 head of sheep on these flats, our parents run over 200 beef cattle … we grow premium hay for horse clients, there is a lot that goes on.”
She said the family would continue to explore all options to keep their farms operating but the future was largely unknown.
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