RESEARCH ON SUSTAINABILE AGRICULTURE

QUESTION

Questions to Consider

You need to consider carefully the texts that you select for your annotated bibliography. Keep the following questions in mind to help clarify your choices.

1. What topic/ problem am I investigating?
2. What question(s) am I exploring? Identify the aim of your literature research.
3. What kind of material am I looking at and why? Am I looking for journal articles, reports, policies or primary historical data?
4. Am I being judicious in my selection of texts? Does each text relate to my research topic and assignment requirements?
5. What are the essential or key texts on my topic? Am I finding them? Are the sources valuable or often referred to in other texts?

SOLUTION

Chartres, C, and Williams, J 2006, ‘Can Australia Overcome its Water Scarcity Problems?’, Journal of Developments in Sustainable Agriculture 1: 17-24

The paper is a research report developed in order to highlight the water scarcity issues being faced in Australia. The report starts with explaining the various water resources available in Australia and the unequal distribution of water resources in the northern (sparsely populated) and southern (densely populated) regions of Australia. It highlights the importance of the Murray Darling Basin where almost 75% of the irrigation in the country occurs. The report explains with the help of data and figures how the change in climate and use of land has affected the water resources and its environmental sustainability over the years. The role of government, the authors explain, is very important as they possess the power to permit different parties to use water for different purposes. It highlights a situation when the government had to perform an audit related to the levels of sustainability which revealed that 26% of the water management (surface water & underground) were either close to or have breached the sustainability levels. Another important aspect of the paper is the efficiency in usage of water in order to prevent any kind of water wastage. An example showed improvement in productivity of rice production resulting in a significant reduction (16 to 12 Ml/Ha) in water usage over the last 20 years. The authors conclude by stating the importance of reforms related to issue which would help resolve the current issues.

Doyle, P, Gibb, I, and Ho C 2009, ‘How Will Farmers (and Farm Systems) Respond to Changes to Water Availability Scenarios?’

This report has been made for Dairy Australia in order to study the options available with farmers in case of water scarcity. The scope of the study is restricted to small farms and the process involved desktop review of modeling, examining farmer focus groups and selected case studies of farmers. Three projects were undertaken to examine effects on the dairy farms due to the change in the water allocations. These studies were different from each other as one considered steady conditions while the second study performed a sensitivity analysis by implementing different scenarios of water availability and the third one performing an economic analysis of the farms’ profitability due to change in water availability. All these three conclude that even a small to medium reduction in the water availability would adversely affect the smaller farms’ productivity as well as profitability, therefore, changing the focus of farmers from perennial crops to annual crops so as to suit the water availability conditions.

Lee, LY, Ancev, T, and Vervoort, W 2012, ‘Evaluation of environmental policies targeting irrigated agriculture: The case of the Mooki catchment, Australia’, Agricultural Water Management, Volume 109, Pages 107–116

This is a research paper related to environmental policies and irrigation in Australia. The scope f the study is to evaluate the cost of environmental policies with the help of a case study of the Mooki catchment in New South Wales. The basis for performing the study is the ongoing debate related to efficient usage of water resources and the environmental effect on the Murray-Darling Basin which apparently produces 41% of the country’s total agricultural production. An empirical study was performed based on the framework with the help of a multi-period linear programming model with an objective function of maximization of profit from cropping subject to different environmental constraints. The results for environmental policy costs shows that there is little need for intervention by government bodies in order to improve the environmental outcomes with implementation of right institutional arrangements in the catchment. The authors conclude by highlighting the need of government subsidies and reforms to improve the profitability of the irrigation enterprises and also states few instruments required to improve the salinity conditions.

Craik, W 2007, ‘The Murray-Darling Basin- Australia’s Food bowl’

The author describes the work of the Murray-Darling Basin Commission (MDBC) by explaining the history of the commission and its predecessor. The main focus of the report is the issue of drought which the Basin has been facing for last few years. The author explains the history of the Basin and the previous scenarios of drought which eventually led to formation of the River Murray Commission (predecessor of MDBC). The author then goes on to explaining the challenges that the current commission is facing like efficient water usage, environmental issues related to the Basin etc.. The report also explains the combined work being done by the government agencies and the MDBC in current difficult scenarios. The report concludes by stating the future actions taken by the MDBC relating to the improvement of the Basin and educating the young generation about the Basin and its importance to the country as a whole.

References

Chartres, C, and Williams, J 2006, ‘Can Australia Overcome its Water Scarcity Problems?’, Journal of Developments in Sustainable Agriculture 1: 17-24 viewed 2 May 2012 <http://www.wentworthgroup.org/docs/Chartres_%26_Williams.pdf>

Craik, W 2007, ‘The Murray—Darling Basin: Australia’s Food Bowl’, Issues, June, Education Research Complete, EBSCOhost, viewed 2 May 2012

Doyle, P, Gibb, I, and Ho C 2009, ‘How Will Farmers (and Farm Systems) Respond to Changes to Water Availability Scenarios?’ viewed 2 May 2012  <http://www.dairyaustralia.com.au/~/media/Documents/Industry-overview/Current-industry-issues/ADIC%20basin%20plan%20response/LMDB%20inquiry/LMDB%20How%20Farmers%20Respond%20to%20Changes%20Water%20Availability.ashx>

Lee, LY, Ancev, T, and Vervoort, W 2012, ‘Evaluation of environmental policies targeting irrigated agriculture: The case of the Mooki catchment, Australia’, Agricultural Water Management, Volume 109, Pages 107–116, ISSN 0378-3774, viewed 2 May 2012 <http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0378377412000662>

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