Drought in Australia’s main food growing region of the Murray-Darling river system has worsened, with water inflows over the past two years at an all-time low, the government’s top water official said
The drought will hit irrigated crops such as rice, grapes and horticulture the hardest, but would have less impact on output of wheat, which depends largely on rainfall during specific periods and is on track to double after two years of shrunken crops.
The record drought, which has gripped much of the country for close to a decade, was the worst in 117 years of record-keeping, with 80 percent of eucalyptus trees already dead or stressed in the region as large as France and Germany combined.
Average rainfall allowed many wheat farmers to plant crops in July, but had not reversed seven years of inflows at their lowest level since 1900, with a dry spring likely ahead, said Neil Plummer, the Acting Head of the National Climate Centre.
The July rains kept alive hopes of a good wheat harvest, with Australia forecast to recover from the last two drought years to boost the national 2008/09 wheat harvest to around 23.7 million tons, according to the official Australian Bureau of Agricultural and Resource Economics (ABARE).
The Murray-Darling accounts for 41 percent of Australia’s agriculture and provides A$21 billion ($17.8 billion) worth of farm exports to Asia and the Middle East. Around 70 percent of irrigated agriculture comes from the basin.
The drought has already wiped more than A$20 billion from the $1 trillion economy since 2002.
Craik said August rainfall was below average and inflows to dams and rivers during the month was only 275 gigaliters (GL), less than a fifth of the long-term average of 1,550 GL.
Dam storages, relied upon by food bowl irrigators heading into the spring and fierce Australian summer, were only 20 percent of capacity.
Slowly warming temperatures, were exacerbating the long dry, with climate scientists warning that every rise of 1.0C reducing river inflows by 15 percent in what was already the world’s driest inhabited continent.
– from reuters