Rice Farmers Go Walkabout  

The SMH has an article on rice farmers fleeing the dessicated inland for the wetter climes of NSW's northern rivers region - Parched rice packs up for sea change.

IN ONE of the first big agricultural moves driven by climate change and a lack of irrigation water in the Murray-Darling Basin, the rice industry is looking north.

With the world hungry for more rice and the Riverina rice bowl in south-western NSW parched by years of drought, about 30 farmers on the North Coast are about to plant rice for the first time.

The 600-hectare planting could represent the birth of a commercial rice-growing region that can be sustained by subtropical rainfall and help the industry break its dependence on flooded fields using the increasingly fickle Murray and Murrumbidgee rivers.

Recent CSIRO reports say the median climate change estimate for 2030 predicts average surface water availability falling by 9 per cent in the Murrumbidgee and 14 per cent in the Murray. Government water buy-backs will further reduce irrigation supplies.

The CSIRO says a reduction in irrigation water is likely to have a significant effect on Australia's rice production, but using rain-fed varieties of rice could help the industry expand to new areas. "Chinese breeders have produced [rain-fed] rice varieties with an estimated yield potential of six to seven tonnes per hectare."

Since 2000, the Northern Rivers farmer Gary Woolley has been trialling rain-fed rice near Coraki and harvested his first commercial crop last year, averaging 3.46 tonnes to the hectare compared with the 10 tonnes to the hectare achieved in the Riverina.