February 8, 2010

Australia's farm federation still optimistic about northern agriculture

The National Farmers Federation (NFF) believes there is huge potential for agriculture in northern Australia, despite a federal government report finding that the north cannot be the nation's food bowl.

Years of drought have crippled production in the Murray Darling Basin, leading governments and researchers to look to northern Australia where there is an abundance of rain.

NFF president David Crombie said expansion in the north was never going to be as easy as transferring agriculture in the south to the north.

The opportunities that are there include good areas of underground water and good soils adjacent to them, he said.

These areas could be suitable for a range of crops, horticulture, field crops, and of course, fodder production for livestock, he said.

Meanwhile, the Northern Australia taskforce based its conclusions about water for irrigation on a report done by the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO).

Dr Peter Stone, deputy chief of CSIRO Sustainable Ecosystems, said the study found just a small amount of groundwater would be potentially available for agriculture.

He said it could supply up to 60,000 hectares over the entire north of Australia, an equivalent to just 2% of the Murray Darling irrigation area.

"Of the million gigalitres falling as rain, 15 per cent goes into groundwater, but only some could be extracted," he said.

"Quite a bit of that groundwater actually supplies base flow for rivers, so when the rain stops, that groundwater actually keeps the river flowing, and a small subset of that, about 600 gigalitres, falls into renewable aquifers, which we've identified as potentially available for alternative uses, and irrigation is one of those," he said.