Australia:

Drought in the nation's almond belt looks almost like a mirror image of California's lingering problems

AgFax.Com - Your Online Ag News Source

Share

By Owen Taylor, From AgFax Almonds

February 6, 2009 – Australia’s almond production region has been through a period of drought so similar to California’s prolonged situation that it almost seems like the two places are separated only by a river, not an entire ocean.

Consider this:

• Water supplies in the Murray River Valley – the nation’s largest river system and the crop’s main irrigation source – fell drastically, starting in the 2005-06 season. As drought persisted, allocations plummeted from 100% to 60%, then to 30% and to as low as 18% in the 2008-09 crop year.

• In places, the 36-month rainfall totals were the lowest on record, and the entire country suffered under a general drought.

• Continuing allocation reductions resulted in some minor orchard abandonment in almonds, although more so in citrus and grapes. In the first drought season, growers shifted to severe deficit irrigation, and yields plummeted. (In the seasons that followed, they aimed for only slight deficit conditions.)

• Reservoir water supplies ran as low as 12% of capacity in places.

“At first, we blamed it on other things – industry, for example, or urban areas – but everyone finally faced the reality that we simply weren’t receiving enough rain,” explained Ben Brown with the Almond Board of Australia (ABA), speaking at the Almond Board of California’s conference in Modesto in early December. “It was a very frustrating situation. Water was flowing over weirs, but there wasn’t enough for all of our irrigation needs. People had always received 100% of their allocations, then suddenly that wasn’t the case, and they thought they had a legal right to that expected amount.”

Producers who fared best, he added, tended to be those who accepted that they, in fact, were in a drought and then looked for ways to cope with it, whether that meant deficit irrigation, taking out low-producing orchards earlier than anticipated or buying water from other sources.

From our sponsor, Chemtura Did you miss your dormant spray because of recent rain? You can still put peach tree borer (PTB) to rest by adding Dimilin® 2L Insect Growth Regulator to your fungicide bloom spray.   Dimilin controls larvae and has been proven to provide strong residual control of PTB. It‘s a good choice at bloom because it doesn’t affect bees and beneficials. So, thank the rain for saving you a trip through the field and say good-bye to PTB. For more information on Dimilin 2L, please contact your local Chemtura Representative:  John Descary Southern San Joaquin Valley (661) 302-9964 Matt Loftus Fresno County (559) 960-1112   Eric Leer North Central California (209) 531-6478 Dimilin 2L is a restricted use pesticide.  Always read and follow label directions. © 2010 Chemtura Corporation. All rights reserved. Chemtura, the Chemtura logo and Dimilin are registered trademarks of Chemtura Corporation.

A good deal of trauma resulted from reductions in allocations and sudden, extra costs. “This has been an emotional rollercoaster,” Brown said.

The country’s almond industry – centered in southeast Australia with a large portion of it in the state of Victoria – is a relatively small and young enterprise. As Brown sees it, that may have been an advantage for coping with the drought.

For example: less than 20% of the nation’s almond trees are at full production, with 50% still non-bearing and less than three years old, he estimated. “About 90% of our industry is under drip irrigation, which is quite a fortunate thing in a drought,” Brown added.

He pointed to several other factors – both good and bad – that made the Australian drought somewhat different from the one here. For one thing, he said, the soil in Australia’s almond belt is of “lower quality” compared to California’s typical almond soils.

“Soils in our almond production areas tend to be quite ordinary, very sandy and infertile, with naturally occurring salt and a high pH from 7 to 7.5 in the topsoil and up to 8 to 8.5 in the subsoil, maybe even higher in places,” he said. “One good thing: the lack of (river) flow resulted in lower salinity because the water that was available did not come over the saltier ground upstream. So, water quality during this period actually hasn’t been that bad.”

As in California, politics played into the drought, though in somewhat different forms.

Environmental concerns did not heavily weigh into the crisis as they have in California. But because the Murray River supplies water to parts of four Australian states, disputes flared over how much water each state should receive.

Hysteria also developed as government officials initially predicted sharp reductions in allocations, only to come back later and upwardly revise estimates and allocations. “They were shooting from the hip, and that caused panic,” which made for wide swings in the price of water where growers tried to buy supplies. When three of the states tightened allocations in the 2007-08 season, “all hell broke loose,” Brown said, and prices briefly peaked at about $550 per acre-inch in U.S. dollars.

One positive offshoot of the drought has been the formation of a water exchange where growers and water holders can openly buy and sell supplies. “We go on a web site and can see water being traded from one valley to another without too much grief,” he explained.

Farmers also gained some supply stability when they were allowed to carry over unused allocation amounts to the next season. “Before, it was ‘use it or lose it,’ and any remaining water at the end of the season went back to the pool to be divvied up later,” he said. “That (retention policy) has been one of the plusses that resulted from all the states coming together and aligning water policy.”

When water was allocated, permanent crops received preference over annual crops.

What lessons have Australians learned so far from their drought? Brown said they include:

Don’t panic. “Those (growers) who survived were the ones who accepted the problem and dealt with it, and they become quite resourceful. They made decisions early. They assessed patches (blocks) and took out those that were poorer performing. These would have been earmarked for replanting in four to six years, anyway, but all that was brought forward, and those trees were pulled out right then and there.”

Indecision, he added, worked against many growers. Some decided not to water certain blocks, then changed their minds and started irrigating too late. Others did the opposite, starting off with irrigation, then dropping it two to three months later.

It’s better to buy water and hold on. Growers who are still around tended to aggressively buy water. “It hasn’t helped their bank balances,” Brown said. “But buying water moved those guys four years down the track, and we’re now seeing what we hope are the highest water allocations in years.”

Growers became “very strategic” about how they locked in water, he added. They began acquiring water with a dollar-cost averaging approach, much as they might buy stock, spreading costs over a 12-month season. Some have bought permanent water rights. That’s a costly approach, Brown admitted, but it locks in a supply from year to year and becomes a long-term asset that would add value to the farming operation if it were put on the market.

Almond trees are hardier than previously believed. “It takes a season or two, but they will bounce back (from deficit irrigation) if you keep them in some sort of decent shape. Nobody has really ‘stag-horn’ pruned their orchards because you’re either in or out, with no in between.”

You can get by with less water, at least in the short term. “We believe we can grow a commercial crop – which equates to about 2,700 pounds per acre – with about 37 inches of water. That seems to be about our tipping point. Anything less than that, and yields tail off quite dramatically.” More water increases yields, but the ratio of added water to yield gain diminishes as the total pushes past 50 inches. At that point, the price of extra water becomes a limiting economic factor.

How that 39 inches is applied makes a difference, too. “Reducing water on sprinkler orchards doesn’t work as well as in drip orchards. Most of our sprinkler irrigation is full coverage, with very limited amounts of micro sprinkler installations.”

Drip requires close timing. “You have to start early to catch the root flush. Some (growers) go a little later and have had reasonable success, but we’re seeing better results with that earlier start. Conversion to drip will not save water as a general rule. In theory it sort of does, but drip systems provide a better response. Compared to what you expect with sprinklers, drip produces more bang for the buck, more productivity with the same allocation.”

With drip, daily irrigation “is a must, particularly with our sandy-textured soils. Growers with drip must also start with a full profile. Starting with a dry profile is an approach fraught with danger.”

Growers started blocking wasted drippers, the ones mainly irrigating weeds. One large farming operation saved an estimated $2 million (Australian) on water transfers over three years by limiting those drip points to the immediate tree. Along with that, growers are paying more attention to weed control. At least two now use WeedSeeker automatic spraying systems to spot-spray unwanted vegetation.

Don’t prematurely defoliate trees through stress. “We had growers in the first season (of allocations) who harvested trees with no leaves on them, and that had an effect on production the next year. Kernel size is likely to decrease.”

Stress does catch up with you. With the Carmel variety, Australians are seeing signs of premature bud failure that might be linked to deficit watering. “Under suboptimal conditions, the variety Price has become very biennially bearing for us. That’s not just between seasons but within patches, with one tree bearing well and the next one not. Our four- to five-year-old trees also are starting to hit a limit where they’ve been under suboptimal conditions. We see competition between vegetative growth and crop set, and that takes its toll on the tree’s ability to fill canopy space. It’s a numbers game. Where it become a bit of a problem, growers keep putting on more water to overcome this competition.”

***

Before the drought, ABA already was investing in productivity research, but the crisis promoted Brown and his colleagues to rethink their approaches. “Before, the research aimed at finding the theoretical maximum yield potential of an almond tree at some very high inputs,” he said. Now, though, the research looks at consumptive use and replacing what the crop took out, trying to find optimum economic return with limited water supplies.

“We can afford to put on about 54 inches of water a season and justify that expense,” Brown said, reporting on results from ongoing trials. “We’ve done economic sensitivity analysis based on how costs varied, giving growers something to work with over time. The localized point is around 55 to 57 inches (of water per season) where we’re achieving 3,000 to 4,000 pounds per acre in yield.”