Submission to the "Inquiry into water-use efficiency in Australian agriculture"

Last Friday I was part of a team that provided a submission to the Standing Committee on Agriculture and Water Resources, inquiry into water-use efficiency in Australian agriculture.

The submission goes through the work I have been doing on water-use efficiency and the Murray-Darling Basin Plan since the 'Possible negative feedbacks from 'gold-plating' irrigation infrastructure'.

The key insights in the document are:

• lack of clarity of how the water savings are being transformed into property rights, and the nature of those rights (i.e their reliability)
• the downside of efficiency is a loss of flexibility and this may reduce the volume of water that can be traded during droughts,  A lack of water in the market in key times may expose private capital investment
• To maximise the water obtained from public spending you would need to target the least efficient farmers, which penalises the good farmers.
• Water-use efficiency has a negative impact on the water obtained from the buy-back

​The full text of the submission is in the attached file

submission_-_srwuip_enquiry_final.pdf
File Size:	608 kb
File Type:	pdf

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