Forage Options for Dairy Farms with Reduced Water Availability in the Southern Murray Darling Basin of Australia

Mary-Jane Rogers, Alister Lawson and Kevin Kelly
Additional contact information
Mary-Jane Rogers: Agriculture Victoria, Department of Economic Development, Jobs Transport and Resources, Private Bag, 255 Ferguson Rd., Tatura, VIC 3616, Australia
Alister Lawson: Agriculture Victoria, Department of Economic Development, Jobs Transport and Resources, Private Bag, 255 Ferguson Rd., Tatura, VIC 3616, Australia
Kevin Kelly: Agriculture Victoria, Department of Economic Development, Jobs Transport and Resources, Private Bag, 255 Ferguson Rd., Tatura, VIC 3616, Australia

Sustainability, 2017, vol. 9, issue 12, 1-20

Abstract: The dairy industry in the southern Murray Darling Basin region of Australia is a major consumer of irrigation water because rainfall is low relative to evapotranspiration and the industrys relies heavily on irrigated temperate pastures and fodder crops. Water reforms, and potential climate change scenarios for this region suggest that there will be an overall decline in rainfall and water available for irrigation in the future. For the irrigated dairy industry to remain economically viable, there is a need for dairy farmers to improve the water productivity (WP) of their forage systems and to be able to respond to year-to-year, and within year, variation in water availability. Researchers and dairy farmers are evaluating strategies to increase WP. These include: (i) selecting better-adapted species for current and predicted climatic conditions; (ii) using species that can survive and still be productive under reduced irrigation and then recover when full irrigation is restored; (iii) modifying irrigation strategies to reduce water use whilst maintaining WP; and (iv) grazing management strategies that facilitate the survival during, and recovery after, periods of moisture stress. This review will examine these strategies and discusses their potential to optimise forage production from irrigation water inputs so that the dairy industry in the southern Murray Darling Basin remains viable in the future.

Keywords: dairy production; deficit irrigation; irrigated pastures; water productivity; water use (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2017
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/9/12/2369/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/9/12/2369/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:9:y:2017:i:12:p:2369-:d:123412

Access Statistics for this article

Sustainability is currently edited by Ms. Alexandra Wu

More articles in Sustainability from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().