“Not unusual” claim by irrigators

Press, Volume CXII, Issue 32902, 28 April 1972, Page 13

“Not unusual” claim by irrigators

It was not unusual for farmers who used irrigation to claim that they were not making any extra money out of the use of water, Mr E. R. Hoare, chief of the division of irrigation research in the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation at Griffith, New South Wales, said in Christchurch last week.

Mr Hoare likened the cost of having irrigation to paying income tax — noone wanted to pay more than they had to. The same attitude applied to the farmer. He would say: "this water that you are giving me is not as useful as you think.” And so he wanted to get it as cheaply as possible. It would often be found that this farmer was, by and large, making a reasonable living. He was farming very comfortably and reliably, the water being like an insurance, and as with an insurance policy he wanted the premium that he paid to be as low as possible. And because he was farming to a point that he found comfortable he was not forced to farm to the point of maximum benefit from the technique he was using. However, Mr Hoare said, when an irrigation system was installed it was a matter of long-term planning and as with the passage of time markets and attitudes changed so farming also had to change and farm-

ing with irrigation offered more opportunities to change to meet new conditions. The fanner could grow a wider range of crops and could go into row crop farming in a more intensive way, which gave bigger returns an acre but involved more work, more equipment and accepting a change in farming methods. Mr Hoare noted that there was a relationship between the intensity of effort that people were prepared to put into it and the benefits that flowed from irrigation and in this respect younger men were often prepared to put in more effort. In this context he said that a farmer who had irrigation applied to his property would probably not have to farm so hard as the man who bought into an irrigation farm and had more capital involved in it which he would have to service. Another benefit of irrigation farming was that at point of retirement an irrigation farmer had a bigger retirement premium in his

property when he left it be- ' cause it was worth a lot ! more. Questioned about Canterbury having a “marginal climate*’ for irrigation with a natural rainfall of 20 to 30 inches, Mr Hoare said that in most climates there were quite long periods when there was no rain and periods of longer than only 10 days were generally long enough for i plants to be wanting water. I As to the most desirable ' form of irrigation to use Mr Hoare noted that there i were situations where ! flood, sprinkler or spray ■ and trickle irrigation sys- I terns were desirable, but no-one could lay down a definite rule in this matter — it was a case of looking at individual situations. On the use of automatic irrigation devices, Mr Hoare said that there were situations where they could be used with advantage but while they might make irrigating more comfortable for the farmer they did not necessarily make irrigation more efficient and increase returns — the same result might be obtained from more effort on the part of the farmer. On the farm at their lab- ‘ oratory and on other farms they preferred use of simple devices and methods which they felt had perhaps more application and did not involve much cost when practices or procedures were being changed. Mr Hoare is spending about 14 days in New Zealand studying irrigation development in this country

and visiting associated research groups in the Department of Scientific and Industrial Research and in the universities.