MORE WATER WANTED ON ARABLE LAND

Press, Volume CIX, Issue 32274, 17 April 1970, Page 6

MORE WATER WANTED ON ARABLE LAND

There was now a situation in the 78,000acre area of the Ashburton-Hinds Irrigation Association where in many cases there was insufficient water for existing irrigators, the chairman of the association, Mr J. R. Cocks, and the vice-chaitinan, Mr J. Brand, said in submissions to the irrigation committee of the Water Allocation Council in Ashburton last week, and if potential irrigators who had applied for water from the same source were added the demand would far exceed the supply.

If water was to be divided pro rata among all applicants, in many cases no-one would have enough to justify investment in expensive capital equipment and many of those at present irrigating would be forced to sell their plants, they said.

I Now about 80 farmers are - irrigating in the district, > mostly with spray plants, > but there are several flood - irrigating and some are 1 using underground water as t their source of supply. i The association said that r the obvious answer was to implement a scheme to

bring in enough water for everyone so that the expansion of irrigation could proceed in a properly planned and orderly manner, which would ensure the best possible engineering design and the lowest possible operating cost. “We feel that a scheme could be provided for this area which would be the cheapest scheme ever installed in New Zealand," said Messrs Cocks and Brand. “There is a network of drains that intersects the Ashburton-Hinds area, comprising more than 200 miles of major drains of sufficient capacity to serve as supply races and a very large number of private drains, and although additional main channels will be necessary to reticulate some areas the vast majority of these channels and the expensive road crossings are all in position and fully maintained by the district.” Although the whole area comprised good arable land, they said that the greatest limiting factor to further increases in production was water and their main aim was to provide sufficient water for tne whole district to proceed with further development.

“There is no better Investment in agriculture in this area than irrigation,” they added. The tremendous potential for further intensification of farming by the use of artificial nitrogen was also closely associated with the use of water.

They said that financial results from several farms were being submitted to the committee in support of their contention that irrigation of good arable land would show at least equal, if not greater returns from a cusec of water than its use on other soil types. Messrs Cocks and Brand said that investment in irrigation equipment would show a much higher return than investment in additional land and as competition for land in good arable districts increased more farmers were turning to irrigation for that reason.

On the question of principles applicable to the granting of water rights for irrigation, they said that security of water was the fundamental basis of any irrigation project In separate submissions, Mr Cocks, who said he had been intensively spray irrigating his entire property for the last 14 years, observed that he would be very, very reluctant to ever farm again without irrigation.