Australian drought gets worse:
World rice prices to go up again?
By Jon Fernquest |
Leading Thai food economist Dr. Siam Amarwalla mentioned it as the indirect cause of high rice prices worldwide a few months ago (Read article).
The drought in Australia has had a great impact on the world's food supply.
World rice prices have dropped a bit, at least for the time being, but the drought in Australia continues and has even gotten worse.
An article in today's Bangkok Post covers the the latest developments in the Australian drought.
(Photo above shows a former swimming place (swimming hole) that no longer has any water because of a drought.)
Here is the article in full:
ACCELERATING CLIMATE WARMING
Australia food-bowl drought worsens, rains spare wheat
ROB TAYLOR11-07-2008
CANBERRA : The prolonged drought in Australia's Murray-Darling river system is worsening and the country's main food bowl may forever be changed by accelerating climate warming, government officials said yesterday.
Despite good seasonal rains, June inflows into the river basin were the lowest in over a century on record and climate experts are tipping a 70% chance of below average rain in the next decade, with next year likely to be a "shocker".
The drought will hit irrigated crops like rice, grapes and horticulture the hardest, but would have less impact on output of wheat, which depends largely on rainfall during specific periods and is on track to double after two years of shrunken crops.
"Regrettably, the drought is getting worse," said Wendy Craik, chief executive of the government's overseeing Murray-Darling Basin Commission, revealing June inflows were only 95 gigalitres (gl) against a long-term average of 680gl.
"If the sort of climatic regime we've had in the past couple of years becomes a feature of the future, it's clear we don't have the volume of water available we've had in the past. Clearly the basin is not going to be the same," Ms Craik said.
After good early rains, which briefly eased Australia's worst dry spell in 100 years, dry weather has set in again in the past three months, plunging more rural areas back into drought.
The Murray-Darling, an area the size of France and Germany combined, produces 41% of Australia's agriculture and provides A$21 billion worth of farm exports to Asia and the Middle East. Around 70% of all irrigated agriculture comes from the sprawling region. Wheat is grown throughout areas surrounding the basin and the brief wet spell prompted many growers to "bet the farm" on a good season, hoping another brief break in the long dry will come at the right time for a bumper harvest.
Although last month's dry spell forced analysts to revise down their forecasts for a near-record crop, current expectations for a harvest of about 23 million tonnes would be well up from 10 to 13 million tonnes over the past two years.
Neil Plummer, senior climatologist at Australia's National Climate Centre, said rains barely dented the drought, or the one-in-two chance of a dry year ahead. As well, long-term trends now pointed to over six years of below average rain each decade.
"[Australia's] autumn can only be described as an absolute shocker in terms of climate conditions for the basin," Mr Plummer said. Ms Craik said while the basin was expected to have enough water for critical needs in the coming year, many irrigators would face zero or near-zero water allocations and environmental river flows would be a bare minimum.
The warmer outlook for what is already the world's driest inhabited continent would also force hard decisions on river use, with the water needed to save threatened lakes more than the total extracted last year by basin irrigators.
The government's top climate adviser, economist Ross Garnaut, last week said the Murray-Darling could be devastated by climate change without global action, with irrigated agriculture slashed by 92%.
The current drought has already wiped more than A$20 billion from the economy since 2002. But Ms Craik said growers were proving resilient, pointing to barely changed grape harvests last year, which dropped from 1.9 to 1.8 million tonnes as farmers introduced more water-efficient cropping systems. REUTERS
(Source: Bangkok Post, general news, 11-07-08, page 4, Rob Taylor, Reuters, temp-link)
Vocabulary:
Australia food-bowl, the country's main food bowl - Australia's main food producing region
a drought - a period with little rain and very limited water supplies (See Wikipedia)
a prolonged drought - a very long drought
accelerating climate warming - a period of time when the climate is increasingly warm without rain
climate experts are tipping a 70% chance of below average rain in the next decade -
irrigation - the artificial application of water to the soil usually for assisting in growing crops, through canals that bring water from rivers or different regions where water is plentiful (See Wikipedia on irrigation)
irrigated crops - crops that are assisted in their growth by the artificial application of water to the soil
Regrettably,.... - a way to introduce bad news that you are going to tell someone
giga - one billion
gigalitres - billions of litres
a regime - a system
a climatic regime - a weather system
becomes a feature of the future - becomes something that normally happens
a dry spell - a period of time when there is little or no rain
a wet spell - a period of time when there is a lot of rain
bet the farm on a good season - like gambling, if you're wrong then you lose your farm, if you're right then you get a profit
a bumper harvest - a very good harvest, with a lot of crops harvested
revise down their forecasts - reduce the amount they believe will occur in the future
a climatologist - an expert who studies climate and weather conditions (See Wikipedia on climatology)
rains barely dented the drought - the amount of rain was not enough to end the drought, there is still a water shortage
critical needs - important needs
allocations - the amounts that are given to different members of a group after dividing something up (See glossary)
water allocations - limited water given to different people
extracted - taken out of
wiped more than A$20 billion from the economy - reduced GDP by A$20 billion
efficient - waste little time, energy and resources in doing a task
(minimize time, energy and resources in performing a task)(See glossary)
more water-efficient cropping system - a system that uses less resources to grow the same amount of crops
