Don't blame the Murray-Darling Basin Plan. It's climate and economic change driving farmers out
- Written by Sarah Ann Wheeler, Professor in Water Economics, University of Adelaide
For the thousand or so farmers in Canberra in the past week venting their anger at the federal government, it’s the Murray-Darling Basin Plan to blame[1] for destroying their livelihoods and forcing them off the land.
We can’t comment directly on their claims about the basin plan. But our research, looking at the years 1991 to 2011, suggests little association between the amount of water extracted from the Murray-Darling river system for irrigation and total farmer numbers.
That’s not to say there aren’t fewer farms in the basin now than a decade ago – there are – but our analysis points to the more important drivers being the longer-term influences of changing climate, economics and demographics.
Indeed our study predicts another 0.5℃ increase in temperature by 2041 will halve the current number of farmers in the basin.
Hostility to water recovery
MDBA[2]Over many decades state governments in Queensland, New South Wales, Victoria and South Australia licensed to farmers more entitlements to water than the river system could sustain. The basis of the Murray-Darling Basin Plan, enacted in 2012, was to rectify this through buying back about a quarter of all water licences to ensure an environmental flow.
A water entitlement, despite its name, does not guarantee a licence holder a certain amount of water. That depends on the water available, and that is determined by the states, which make allocations to each type of licence based on its type of security and current conditions.
With drought, farmers have seen their allocations severely cut back, sometimes to nothing. And partly because they see there’s still water in the River Murray, some are very angry[3].
Read more: The water crisis has plunged the Nats into a world of pain. But they reap what they sow[4]
Hostility to water recovery in fact predates the plan’s enactment, to when the federal government began buying back water entitlements in 2008. The Commonwealth now holds about 20% of water entitlements across the basin. More than two-thirds of these licences were recovered between 2008 and 2012[5].
Lack of correlation
Our research thus covers the period of most significant water buybacks. It also covers the period of the Millennium Drought, from 2001 to 2009, when the amount of water extracted from the river system dropped by about 70%.
Yet we see little evidence reduced water extractions led to more farmers exiting the industry.
As a very broad overview of the situation, the following graph illustrates the lack of correlation between measured water extraction in the Murray-Darling Basin and decreasing farmer numbers.
References
- ^ Murray-Darling Basin Plan to blame (www.canberratimes.com.au)
- ^ MDBA (www.mdba.gov.au)
- ^ very angry (thenewdaily.com.au)
- ^ The water crisis has plunged the Nats into a world of pain. But they reap what they sow (theconversation.com)
- ^ 2008 and 2012 (www.annualreviews.org)
- ^ findings (link.springer.com)
- ^ statistical local areas (www.abs.gov.au)
- ^ psychological distress (www.sciencedirect.com)
- ^ Scarcity drives water prices, not government water recovery: new research (theconversation.com)
Authors: Sarah Ann Wheeler, Professor in Water Economics, University of Adelaide