Southern Riverina food producers have welcome recent rains – but warned they may only provide short term relief.
Food producer lobby group Speak Up spokesperson Shelley Scoullar said more needed to be done to ensure long term water security, to allow producers to get on with putting food on the table.
Mrs Scoullar said the rain was critical to providing a good start to winter crops, starting pasture growth for livestock, providing run off into dams and easing pressure on dairy farmers, hit by a cut in milk prices.
Mrs Scoullar emphasised that although good rain events were extremely important to the well-being of food producers and the region’s communities, on their own they were not enough.
“It is imperative we develop good water policy to ensure we maximise our water resources for food production and the environment,” Mrs Scoullar said.
“Since the implementation of the Murray-Darling Basin Plan four years ago, it has become apparent that despite all the best intentions and ideologies, it has some basic flaws which need to be addressed.
“People living in the Basin know that the claims of achieving an equal balance between social, economic and environmental priorities are nothing more than rhetoric without reality.”
Mrs Scoullar said politicans and the Murray Darling Basin Authority (MDBA) needed to acknowledge that fact and do something about it.
“Until we do that, rain events will be a bonus but will not provide a solution to the extreme difficulties being faced by our food producers and the communities which rely on them,” Mrs Scoullar said.
“If spring turns dry access to affordable water, that means farmers can finish off crops and produce high yielding and quality grains.
“It means our dairy farmers can produce their own feed for their herd and our vegetable and fruit growers can plan crops.
“And it means summer croppers, like our rice growers who produce the highest quality medium grain and are the most water efficient in the world, can also plan their crops.”
From a community perspective, productive farmers employed more people and spent money in towns, which relied heavily on that income.
In turn, town businesses could employ more people.
“It’s the multiplier effect which is so valuable not only to the region’s economy, but to the national economy.
“If we want to transition successfully from the mining boom to the dining boom we must get water policy right, which at the present time is not the case,” Mrs Scoullar said.