The Victorian Department of Sustainability and Environment (DSE) spent the latter decades of the 20th century fully integrating the surface and sub-surface drainage systems with the water distribution network in northern Victoria, thereby enabling complete recycling of outfalls, leaks and...

Potential for change in the mix of irrigated enterprises was estimated for a catchment in the Shepparton irrigation region using linear programming. The model allocated resources to maximise net income in each of the next five decades as if the catchment were one farm. Change was driven by price...

Consultation with industry identified a range of knowledge and information management tools required for building decision support systems (DSSs) that can help guide sustainable development of irrigated dairy production in the Murray Region. Individual production systems vary in complexity and...

An allowance for water use is part of the agronomic analysis implicit in the foundation of any sensible economic evaluation of crop response or change of farming system. Diminishing returns to investment in water use efficiency imply that the optimum level of investment is determined by the...

Net annual costs for disposal by pumping to the Murray River, an on-farm evaporation basin, conjunctive use with surface water to irrigate dairy pasture, and undiluted irrigation of a salt tolerant grass were estimated and compared. Total conjunctive use (TCU) is the cheapest option below 10dS/m...

An optimisation model was developed to compare the profitability of different forage species on irrigated dairy farms. The model is driven by the energy and protein requirements of the milking cow. The objective of the model is to maximise income, after herd and feed costs, by selecting the area...