Relentless Drought On Track To Cut Australian Wheat Harvest By 2/3rds

[hatrack]

EDIT

Several cities and regions from the west to the east coast are experiencing their driest year on record. Reservoirs were already low at the outset of 2006 with some areas enduring below-average rainfall for the past decade. David Dreverman, a leading water conservation scientist, says such a drought comes once in 1,000 years. Dreverman, manager of the government commission that monitors water flows in the Murray and Darling rivers, a system that sustains 40 percent of Australia's farming, has told state government leaders that inflows this year were 54 percent below the last record low _ by far the biggest drop on record.

The Australian Bureau of Agricultural and Resource Economics, a government commodities researcher, predicts harvests of wheat barley, barley and canola will cut the nation's grain earnings by $4.7 billion, or 35 percent, this fiscal year which began on July 1. Australia is usually the world's largest wheat exporter after the United States and Canada, but a lack of winter rain across the southeast means only 10.5 million tons of wheat will be harvested, the smallest crop in more than a decade. That's compared with 28 million tons in the previous year.

The bureau also estimated the drought will shave 0.7 percentage points from the government's economic growth forecast of 3.25 percent for the year ending June 30, 2007.

EDIT

The government in October increased welfare and subsidies to 72,000 farmers _ about half the nation's total. "I don't know that we've seen this much of Australia's land mass covered by drought in the past, and it requires a significant response," Deputy Prime Minister Mark Vaile said. Food prices are climbing, and the Central Bank has raised interest rates eight times, a quarter point each time, since May 2002.

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http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/ap/fn/4380750.html

[kestrel91316]

1. Bread is going to get a bit pricey in Oz, I suspect. But that's ok.

They can eat cake, right??

[phantom power]

2. Has anybody explained to them the virtues of an ethanol economy?

[Nihil]

3. Explained to Aussies about doing anything with alcohol bar drink it?

:spray:

Strewth mate! What a waste!

[NickB79]

4. Or the virtues of biogas from manure?

Oh wait, their cattle are all dying from thirst and hunger......