A leading Merbein dried fruit grower has called for the socio-economic review of the southern Murray Darling basin to include an examination of changing land use in the Sunraysia district.
The Murray Darling Basin Authority (MDBA) has flagged a review of the southern basin, after releasing a report showing water buy backs had resulted in job losses in northern NSW and southern Queensland.
Stephen Bennett grows sultanas, Sun Muscats and Sun Glow grapes on a 32 hectare block but he said new crops, such as almonds, were putting pressure on growers.
“The issue with almonds is that per hectare, vines may use nine to ten megalitres of water, while almonds use 14-16ML,” Mr Bennett said. “That’s going to put pressure on the temporary water market, no doubt, the water has to come from somewhere, to go to the almonds.”
He said while the temporary water price was around $100/ML it was manageable, but when it reached $200-300/ML, “there’ll be a fair bit of protest and questions will be asked about land which has been allocated for irrigation, which hasn’t been used for irrigation before.
“The basin plan was fairly focused on returning environmental flows, but as far as I’m aware there was no real focus on land for irrigation, taking into account the amount of water that might be needed.”
Mr Bennett, who sits on the Dried Fruits Australia board, said he also believed the way water was distributed should also be examined.
Malcolm Bennett said pumped irrigation districts were the most disadvantaged, as they were generally smaller holdings. “When the wine grape industry collapsed, we ended up with a lot of dry blocks and people sold off their entitlements, particularly to the almond industry,” Mr Bennett said. “It’s pretty hard to see that water coming back, because even horticulture farms tend to be getting bigger, to try and get economies of scale.
“You could call almonds broad acre horticulture, but for the more intensive horticulture, land is starting to run out.”
