Climate change in Australia

"It is so hot Here in South Eastern Australia. We are well over 15 degrees Centigrade warmer than usual for this time of year"

---Kristy Lewis, Sydney

Under the radar: Dams bone dry and crops failing in north-west Victoria

In some places, the cracks will swallow a finger. In others they are so deep and wide that they will comfortably swallow the hand of a man, all the way down to the wrist.

The Age,

16 November, 2014

The big dry makes it relatively easy to walk across the bottom of the dry dams on Mal Burge's farm but it is impossible not to step on the cracks. The floor of the dams have cracked so much that they resemble giant jigsaw puzzles.

Shortage acute: Farmer Mal Burge at his sheep and crops property near Wedderburn, where he is carting water to his sheep for the first time in years. Photo: Angela Wylie

There are 25 dams on Mr Burge's farm at Woosang, near Charlton in north-west Victoria.Though summer hasn't started, 24 are bone dry. The 25th, near the farmhouse, contains just half a metre or so of water.

The big dry means that Mr Burge is carting more than 50,000 litres of water around his farm each week to keep his flock of 1600 sheep alive. Every Monday, Wednesday and Friday he climbs into the cab of his old Bedford and, with two large tanks on the tray behind, he rumbles slowly along the local dirt roads and farm tracks distributing water pumped from the Wimmera-Mallee Pipeline into strategically located tanks in the paddocks. The tanks then automatically re-fill large plastic troughs for the sheep to drink from.

With eight mobs of sheep spread around his 1100-hectare farm there is a lot of driving and pumping - plus, of course, rising fuel and water bills.

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Low Spring rainfall sees low yields for Victoria Farmers

Mr Burge is one of a growing number of farmers in the districts around Wedderburn and Woosang carting water. He has been doing it for more than two months. "This year we've only had about  seven inches of rain. In 2013, it was around nine inches and the same for 2012. We normally have 15 to 16 inches in this area," he says.

The 57 year old has farmed on the wide plains beside the Calder Highway for nearly 40 years and has never seen the farm so dry.

"It really is unprecedented, what we're experiencing at the moment. The fact that we've had no run-off for over three years - and we really rely on our run-off for our dams," he says. "I'm expecting that [last dam] to probably go dry early next year some time. I've never seen that in my lifetime."

While the drought conditions across northern New South Wales and most of Queensland have hit the national conscience, the dry hitting Victoria's north-west is receiving little attention in Melbourne and southern Victoria, where it remains relatively cool and green.

In parts of north-west Victoria some farmers will make a loss from their grain crops this season. Some crops were so poor farmers long ago gave up hopes of harvesting them, instead opening the gates to let livestock in to feed on them. 


Livestock producers have also been selling stock earlier than they otherwise would have.

The Victorian Farmers Federation has brought the big dry into the election campaign, calling for drought assistance as farmers are confronted by a "1-in-20-year rainfall deficiency". Federation president Peter Tuohey wants the state and federal governments to sign off on a drought concessional loans package as soon as possible - and he wants the state to allocate funds to farmers to help offset the costs of carting water.

"After 10 or 15 years of extremely dry weather, with only a couple of good years among them, this drought period has added to their pain and the financial woes of quite a number of producers in that area. So they will need financial help to be able to plant next year's crop and to manage their businesses," he says.

The farmers federation welcomed one of the few intrusions of rural water issues into the campaign this year, when opposition leader Dan Andrews said a Labor government would not change the rules governing the operation of the controversial north-south pipeline.

Built by the former Brumby Labor government for about $700 million at a time when the state had endured years of drought, the 70 kilometre pipeline can pump water from the Goulburn River on the north side of the Great Dividing Range to the Sugarloaf Dam, part of Melbourne's water storage network.

The project caused outrage in country communities, particularly in northern Victoria, and led to a protest vote against Labor in some electorates in 2010. 


Under the existing rules water can only be transferred to Melbourne's dam system when the city's storage level is below 30 per cent of capacity. It is currently close to 80 per cent. Wary of a fresh backlash over the issue, Labor will keep the rules in place.

At a local level, some steps are being taken. Recognising the severe dry conditions many farmers face, the Loddon Shire Council will fund the installation of four hydrants for farmers to access water for stock. Local mayor Gavan Holt says: "It's as dry as I've ever seen it.

Back on Malcolm Burge's farm the conditions could not be any more different from what they were in January 2011, when floodwater covered most of the property. "In that January period we had close on about five inches of rain over a period of a couple of days. Water covered the majority of the farm," he says.

Mr Burge says the need for financial assistance to help farmers battling severe dry conditions is significant. "I think a lot of people out there will really need some assistance just to keep going."

Australian agriculture needs 

to adapt, not simply shift, to 

meet climate change

Peanuts have moved north, tuna has moved east, wine has moved south.

Reuters,

15 October, 2014

But sooner or later, Australia is going to run out of places to shift agricultural production to avoid the harsh effects of climate change.

Australia's flagship scientific body told the Reuters Global Climate Change Summit on Wednesday that it is therefore critical for companies to consider both mitigation and adaption measures now.

"We have to act very soon on mitigation, reducing carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, and adaptation," the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization's (CSIRO) Science Director for Climate Adaption Mark Stafford Smith said in an interview in Sydney.

Climate change is a major threat to food security in a country that has talked about becoming a "food bowl" for Asia. It also complicates a government plan to increase agricultural production to meet an expected doubling in global food demand by 2050.

As the only developed nation dominated by an arid climate, Stafford Smith said, Australia faces more variability in rainfall, prolonged droughts and a greater incidence of extreme weather events.

The government-funded CSIRO is working with a range of industries and companies on a number of adaptation strategies.

Treasury Wine Estates Ltd and other wine companies are testing underground irrigation systems, developed with CSIRO, in their vineyards in response to increased levels of evaporation.

The agency is also working with cereal farmers to experiment with new grain varieties better able to cope with higher levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.

The average global temperature has warmed by more than 0.7 degrees Celsius over the past century, and the present warming rate is 0.2 degrees Celsius per decade, according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

Australia is heating up even faster - a joint Bureau of Meteorology-CSIRO State of the Climate 2014 report found current temperatures are, on average, almost one degree Celsius warmer than they were in 1910. Most of this increase has occurred since the 1950s, suggesting an accelerated warming trend.

SHIFTING PRODUCTION

The need to adapt is reflected in the varying success Australian industries have had in making a straightforward geographical shift.

Wine companies are benefiting from the purchase of vineyards in the tiny island-state of Tasmania. Prompted by ever hotter and drier conditions to find alternatives to the country's traditional wine growing regions on the mainland, they are now growing different varieties in the cooler southern climate.

Tuna fisheries in the Southern Ocean have shifted further east as sea temperatures rise, initially moving them closer to ports and other infrastructure. But if they continue to chase warmer waters east, they will move further away again.

A lack of infrastructure was the downfall of a move by peanut growers from central Queensland to the tip of the Northern Territory. Growers moved north to take advantage of the mix of sun and higher rainfall, but high transport costs and mould hampered their efforts.

The Peanut Company of Australia abandoned its plans for large-scale production in the far north in 2012, selling its property after just five years on the land to a sandalwood producer.

The peanut industry is looking at trying again, but this time it is setting the stage with a trial crop to try and find a new variety of peanut for the northern climate.

Stafford Smith said it is that kind of innovation rather than simply shifting geographies that Australia needs to pursue - and could potentially export to others, given the country is at the forefront of responding to climate change.

"Australia has a comparative advantage in dry-land agriculture and on the natural resources side," he said.