Australia's farms dropped their irrigation water usage by almost one fifth during 2007-08, according to figures released today by the Australian Bureau of Statistics.
This brings irrigation water use to a new low of 6285 gigalitres and comes on the back of a drop of nearly one third in the preceding year.
According to the ABS, most of this decrease was due to less irrigation on pasture and crops grown for grazing, hay and silage, and cotton and rice crops.
The biggest drop happened again in the Murray-Darling Basin, where water use was down by 30 per cent - compared to a 1pc drop for the rest of Australia.
The Murray-Darling Basin still made up half (3142GL) of Australia's total irrigation, but this is down considerably from just two years earlier when it comprised more than two thirds of the total.
The ABS says the largest use of water by farmers in the Murray-Darling Basin was for irrigation of cereals (805GL); pastures and crops for grazing (657GL) and grapevines (434GL).
While nationally the volume of irrigation water dropped significantly there was only a slight fall in the area irrigated, down only 4pc, giving an average application rate of 3.4 megalitres per hectare, the lowest in recent years.
The thirstiest crop was still rice, taking 12.9 megalitres per hectare, but on a much reduced crop.
The figures were released as ABARE issued a new report to help irrigators maximise the value of available water resources through improved water storage management arrangements such as capacity sharing.
The report, Management of irrigation water storages: carryover rights and capacity sharing, examines capacity sharing as one approach to water allocation, which could provide irrigators with greater flexibility over how they use available water resources.
"Property rights reforms such as capacity sharing are one way to help irrigators maximise the productive value of available water resources," ABARE executive director Phillip Glyde said.
"This is an increasingly important objective given the predicted effects of climate change on water availability and the need to obtain further water for the environment."
ABARE says capacity sharing involves allocating water users a share of storage capacity in major reservoirs and a right to a share of the inflows received by those storages.
These capacity shares can then be managed independently by water users, like a bank account.
According to the report, improvements in storage management can result in increases in average incomes of irrigators and decreases in income variability.
"Ultimately capacity sharing provides irrigators with greater flexibility over how and when they use available water resources," Mr Glyde said.
Relative to capacity sharing, the traditional centralised allocation approach used in most irrigation schemes provides irrigators with little flexibility over storage decisions.
"While many irrigators in these systems have carryover rights, these rights are subject to a number of practical limitations," Mr Glyde said.
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