Water use down, production up on farms: ABS

The latest Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) figures on agriculture have been released and they reveal some interesting trends, especially regarding water use.

Despite the total water use on Australian farms declining 3% in 2015-16, the gross value of agriculture production increased by $3.1 billion. This can largely be attributed to increases in livestock and commodity prices, increases in livestock disposals and rises in the total value of crops.

2015-16 was a generally warm, dry year for Australia with above average temperatures and low rainfall. This affected the amount of runoff water available on-farm as well as limiting water allocations in some regions.

Total water use on Australian farms decreased to a total of 9.2 million megalitres (ML), nearly 240,000ML less than the previous year.  The volume of water used for irrigation also decreased, down 3% to 8.4ML with the number of businesses irrigating decreasing at a higher rate, down 18% to 22,700 businesses. These figures also show a trend towards dryland farming and finding water efficiencies to produce more with less water.

The decrease in businesses irrigating is particularly prominent in New South Wales with the number of irrigating businesses falling 21% (down to 5,300), driven by sales of water allocations.

The Murray Darling Basin accounted for 57% of the nation's total water used for irrigation in 2015-16. Agricultural businesses in the Murray Darling Basin region used 4.9 million ML of water to irrigate 1.2 million hectares of crops and pastures during 2015-16. The area irrigated in the Murray Darling Basin account for 58% of the nation's total area watered.

Nationally, the gross value of livestock slaughterings and other disposals increased by $1.9 billion to $20.6 billion in 2015-16. The gross value of crop production also increased (up 5%) from $26.0 billion in 2014-15 to $27.3 billion in 2015-16. The gross value of cattle and calves in Australia has increased by 13% to $13.1 million in 2015-16, largely driven by higher slaughter returns.

Posted on Thursday, 24 August 2017
in Latest News
ABS Murray Darling Basin production water
Previous Post Following Post

Share this post

Posts this year

Archived Posts

Tags

ABARES agriculture auction beef buyfromthebush carbon farming cattle market chickpeas china clearing sale conservation cotton COVID-19 cropping diversification drought farm for sale grazing harvest Investment lease livestock market marketing north-west NSW production Q&A rural property for sale rural property market Rural Property NSW sheep technology trade Ukraine wheat