FEDERAL investment in Tasmania's irrigation projects is urgently required, or the program will grind to a halt, according to the scheme's head.
A Federal commitment of $110 million was now crucial, said Tasmanian Irrigation (TI) chief executive Chris Oldfield.
"We won't be able to maintain the level of staff we have got, if we don't have work and we don't have money," Mr Oldfield said.
"We have almost finished our tranche one program, but the reality is, without money we can't employ people and if we lose this expertise we can't get it back again."
The Tasmanian Government has committed $30m to the next five schemes, contingent on Federal funding.
The five Tasmanian schemes were among six, nationally, earmarked as part of the Federal Agriculture Green Paper, for funding
Mr Oldfield said Tasmanian could not wait for the whole program to roll out."I know times are tough, but we really need to know fairly soon," he said.
"If we can't get the money, we understand that - it's a sad thing - but we are going to lose staff and lose capacity."
Tasmanian Irrigation needed to have a firm decision by the end of the first quarter of next year, but ideally before Christmas.
The Federal MP for Lyons Eric Hutchinson said the matter was now with Infrastructure Australia.
"Because it is more than $100m, it is obliged to go before infrastructure Australia - I have had that confirmed by the Prime Miniser," Mr Hutchinson said.
Tasmania's Primary Industries Minister Jeremy Rockcliff said he remained "quietly confident" the Federal Government would fund the second round of irrigation projects.
"No-one has signed on the dotted line, but we were encouraged to see the five schemes were in the Green Paper," Mr Rockcliff said.
"The Federal Minister understands the importance of water development, nationally, and also understands while we are often perceived as having plenty of rainfall, a lot of it falls on the west coast and we need to distribute it around the state.
"I am an optimist, I know Tasmanian Irrigation and the State Government have done all they can to this point."
South Esk farmer Amy Grubb said irrigation opened up new opportunities for her sons, Beau and James, who often played in the paddocks when their father Ben was working on the irrigators.
"These children - if they choose to farm will have water," Ms Grubb said.
"We are on the South Esk Irrigation Scheme run by TI and we have been able to plant crops we wouldn't have ever dreamed of before as we now have "some" water that is 100 per cent reliable, for example we can grow high risk crops like carrot seed.
"We have always had surety (five and six) water on this farm, yet in a tight season it isn't available so you can't take the risk on high value crops.
"It is the surety of the TI water that makes the difference to the farming operation."
