Best practice for irrigators
Assess your drought risk by considering:
- your resilience to dry spells. Think about crop demand, types and requirements, soil type, your abstraction licence volume, storage and groundwater availability
- if surface water sources are restricted can you:
- temporarily switch to groundwater
- use stored water from offline storage lagoons that have been filled at times of high flow.
- how does water resource availability align with your planting programme?
Improve irrigation practice by:
- Considering any steps or actions that can be taken to reduce the volume of water abstracted while ensuring the crop receives the water it needs.
- Optimising soil management. Taking care of soils can help increase resilience in the long term. Healthy soils help retain water in the soil making more available to support plant growth during droughts and reduce the need for irrigation.
- Using objective monitoring tools to schedule irrigation such as soil moisture and pump meters.
- When investing in irrigation equipment take account of future irrigation plans and the availability of water for irrigation.
- Reviewing expert advice documents on efficient irrigation.
