Water trade policy a threat to national food production

Basin plan water policies are misguided and delusional, writes JAN BEER

Highest value use “simply translates to who can pay the highest price for water”. Picture: David Geraghty

UNDER Murray Darling Basin Plan policies, water in the southern connected basin can now be traded hundreds of kilometres downstream, with state water authorities and river operators then charged with the responsibility of delivering water orders regardless of channel capacity limitations.

Basin Plan policy has facilitated the moving of water to its so-called “highest value use”, which has seen the development of vast monoculture almond and olive plantations in semi-arid sandy regions.

These plantation areas have increased by more than 400 per cent since 2003.

In a nation with limited water and with climate change upon us, the policy of cutting Basin surface water inflows by up to 50 per cent is delusional, misguided and a threat to our nation’s core food production.

Highest value use simply translates to who can pay the highest price for water, and with the plantations predominantly owned by large superannuation pension funds and corporate bodies, the backbone of Australian agriculture, the family farmer who produces our stock fodder, milk products, wheat, barley, rice, vegetables, fruit, that is our daily food needs, simply cannot compete.

This foolish, ill-advised policy facilitates delivery of increasing volumes of water from our temperate food bowl districts near large upstream storages such as Hume Dam and Eildon Weir to hotter arid regions further and further away from major storages.

These bigger volumes cause environmental damage to major river systems, tributaries and forests as river operators try to circumvent natural channel limitations.

It beggars belief that Basin Plan policy makers have encouraged open-market water trade policies that have led to about half of GMID water traded downstream to arid region monoculture plantations.

● Jan Beer is an Upper Goulburn River Catchment Association representative

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