WaterWorks: a decision support tool for irrigation infrastructure decisions at farm level

Increasing water scarcity, climate change and pressure to provide water for environmental flows urge irrigators to be more efficient. In Australia, ongoing water reforms and most recent National Water Security Plan offer incentives to irrigators to adjust their farming practices by adopting water saving irrigation infrastructures to match with soils, crop and climatic conditions. WaterWorks is a decision support tool to facilitate irrigators to make long and short term irrigation infrastructure investment decision at the farm level. It assists irrigators to improve the economic efficiency, water use efficiency and environmental performance of their farm businesses. The WaterWorks has been tested, validated and accepted by the irrigation community and reachers in NSW. The interface of WaterWorks is user-friendly and flexible. The simulation and optimisation module in WaterWorks provides an opportunity to evaluate infrastructure investment decisions to suit their seasonal or long-term water availability. The sensitivity analysis allows substantiating the impact of major variables. Net present value, internal rate of return, benefit cost ratio and payback period are used to analyse the costs and benefits of modern irrigation technology. Application of WaterWorks using a whole farm-level case study indicates its effectiveness in making long term and short term investment decisions. The WaterWorks can be easily integrated into commercial software such as spreadsheets, GIS, real time data acquisition and control systems to further enhance its usability. The WaterWorks can also be used in regional development plannin

Role of aquifer storage and recovery for harmonising irrigation with environment in connected systems

The flows in regulated rivers are strongly dependent on water demand by downstream water users. In irrigated catchments the river flow regimes are alerted to cater for crop demand. The impacts of these altered flows can have significant deleterious ecological impacts. There can be a number of opportunities to manipulate irrigation demand and supply in a way which provide better seasonality of flows and optimise the social, environmental and economic outcomes from water use in a catchment. This paper explores groundwater – surface water substitution as possible way to change water demand patterns. Results of a modelling study show that conjunctive water use through more groundwater extraction or infiltration and extraction is also realistic option capable of replacing over 215GL of peak period surface water use with minimum cost to overall agriculture return. To secure 215GL of water through an aquifer storage and recovery program would cost around $8.96 million

Understanding and valuing the economic, social and environmental components of System Harmonisation

The aim of the Products and Markets component of the System Harmonisation project is to value the economic and environmental outcomes from an irrigation scheme that is operated by and in the interests of society. In this conceptual note the thinking underlying this component of the project are outlined. The aim of this note is to provide elements for debated. The nature and requirements of System Harmonisation demands that a 'systems approach' be taken throughout the project. What becomes important within this approach is how the different elements within a system are isolated and yet linked with one another. In many instances the extent and nature of irrigation systems are defined by the relevant Regional Irrigation Business Partnership (RIBP) under investigation. It is recognised that society has multiple uses for the water (agriculture, industry, households, recreation and the environment) as well as non-use (intrinsic) values for which it derives benefits from and incurs costs in distributing the water in any select manner. Further, it is assumed that the irrigation schemes are run for the benefit of society as a whole. Thus, there is a necessity to evaluate both the private and public costs and benefits associated with irrigation schemes. In order to identify what society values from an irrigation scheme, it is argued that a social matrix approach is needed. This analysis allows for a clustering of the issues people feel is important to them regarding the use of an irrigation scheme. Such an analysis will allow identification of the perceived most and least beneficial activities connected to water allocation, economic modelling of the most productive activities, evaluation of externalities and Cost Benefit Analysis. The net economic benefits that arise from irrigation need to be evaluated. The sectors where benefits are derived can be segregated into agriculture, households, the environment, recreation and industrial uses. The largest of these, by pure scale of the use of water, is agriculture. A gross margins approach is used to evaluate the returns for water in the agricultural sector. In the industrial and household sectors, a simple evaluation approach is used where the quantity of water demanded is multiplied by the price paid in each sector. Non-market valuation techniques are used to evaluate the recreational and environmental uses of water. The difficulty that arises in this analysis is how to evaluate the performance of irrigation schemes, where the outcomes are multifaceted. A 'meta' model approach is suggested in which the different elements from the project are brought together and assessed using a technique derived from the theory surrounding production possibility frontiers. This technique can be used to hypothesise a value for the ecosystem services derived from an irrigation scheme. The performance of an irrigation scheme is evaluated in terms of the suggestions raised to change it. Cost Effective Analysis is to be utilised to evaluate this performance. Then two issues need to be addressed. First, it is necessary to converse with those from other components, particularly those involved in the hydrological programs, to determine the nature of the schemes to be investigated. Second, it is necessary to implement the approach in each of the RIBPs. This work needs to commence with the evaluation of the social values in each region

Sustainable production of Robusta coffee under a changing climate: a 10-year monitoring of fertilizer management in coffee farms in Vietnam and Indonesia

Assessing and prescribing fertilizer use is critical to profitable and sustainable coffee production, and this is becoming a priority concern for the Robusta coffee industry. In this study,annual survey data of 798 farms across selected Robusta coffee-producing provinces in Vietnam and Indonesia between 2008 and 2017 were used to comparatively assess the fertilizer management strategies in these countries. Specifically, we aimed to characterize fertilizer use patterns in the key coffee-growing provinces and discuss the potential for improving nutrient management practices.Four types of chemical (NPK, super phosphate, potassium chloride and urea) and two of natural (compost and lime) fertilizers were routinely used in Vietnam. In Indonesia, NPK and urea were supplemented only with compost. Farmers in Vietnam applied unbalanced quantities of chemical fertilizers (i.e., higher rates than recommended) and at a constant rate between years whereas Indonesian farmers applied well below the recommended rates because of poor accessibility and financial support. The overuse of chemical fertilizers in Vietnam threatens the sustainability of Robusta coffee farming. Nevertheless, there is a potential for improvement in both countries in terms of nutrient management and sustainability of Robusta coffee production by adopting the best local fertilizer management practices

Towards a sustainable energy technologies based agriculture

Sustainability in agriculture and associated primary industries, which are both energy-intensive, is crucial for the development of any country. Increasing scarcity and resulting high fossil fuel prices combined with the need to significantly reduce greenhouse gas emissions, make the improvement of energy efficient farming and increased use of renewable energy essential. This book provides a technological and scientific endeavor to assist society and farming communities in different regions and scales to improve their productivity and sustainability. To fulfill future needs of a modern sustainable agriculture, this book addresses highly actual topics providing innovative, effective and more sustainable solutions for agriculture by using sustainable, environmentally friendly, renewable energy sources and modern energy efficient, cost-improved technologies. The book highlights new areas of research, and further R&D needs. It helps to improve food security for the rapidly growing world population and to reduce carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuel use in agriculture, which presently contributes 22% of the global carbon dioxide emissions. This book provides a source of information, stimuli and incentives for what and how new and energy efficient technologies can be applied as effective tools and solutions in agricultural production to satisfy the continually increasing demand for food and fibre in an economically sustainable way, while contributing to global climate change mitigation. It will be useful and inspiring to decision makers working in different authorities, professionals, agricultural engineers, researchers, and students concerned with agriculture and related primay industries, sustainable energy development and climate change mitigation projects

Copula-based agricultural conditional value-at-risk modelling for geographical diversifications in wheat farming portfolio management

An agricultural producer's crop yield and subsequent farming revenues are affected by many complex factors, including price fluctuations, government policy and climate (e.g., rainfall and temperature) extremes. Geographical diversification is identified as a potential farmer adaptation and decision support tool that could assist producers to reduce unfavourable financial impacts due to variabilities in crop price and yield, associated with climate variations. There has been limited research performed on the effectiveness of this strategy. The paper proposed a new statistical approach to investigate whether the geographical spread of wheat farm portfolios across three climate broad-acre (i.e., rain-fed) zones could potentially reduce financial risks for producers in Australian agro-ecological zones. A suite of popular and statistically robust tools applied in finance based on well-established statistical theories, comprised of the Conditional Value-at-Risk (CVaR) and the joint copula model were employed to evaluate the effectiveness geographical diversification. CVaR is utilised to benchmark the loss (i.e., downside risk), while the copula function is employed to model joint distribution among marginal returns (i.e., profit in each zone). The mean-CVaR optimisations indicate that geographical diversification could be a feasible agricultural risk management approach for wheat farm portfolio managers in achieving their optimised expected returns while controlling the risks (i.e., targeting levels of risk). Further, in this study, the copula-based mean-CVaR model is seen to better simulate extreme losses compared to the conventional multivariate-normal models, which underestimate the minimum risk levels at a given target of expected return. Among the suite of tested copula-based models, the vine copula in this study is found to be a superior in capturing the tail dependencies compared to the other multivariate copula models investigated