By Annelies Gartner
Western Australia is experiencing more long, hot and dry summers that affect rainfall quantity, intensity and distribution, and rural communities are bearing the brunt of the impact.
Increasingly and at a high cost, water needs to be transported to the regions during dry years to help tackle bushfires and provide water for livestock and spraying weeds, as well as other farming operations.
In 2022, to address the challenges of water security in the South West of WA the WaterSmart Dams project was announced.
The project is a collaboration between The University of Western Australia, the Department of Primary Industries and Regional Development, plus groups of motivated growers in regional towns and the Grower Group Alliance, which leads the south-west Western Australian Drought and Innovation Hub.
Associate Professor Nik Callow, from the School of Agriculture and Environment and co-director of the Centre for Water and Spatial Science, is leading the project’s research and development.
"Farming in WA is a great story of innovation, the way they have changed how we grow food and fibre to work with our climate and soils."
Associate Professor Nik Callow.
“UWA is playing an important role by doing the science and being the broker of quality knowledge, but the other critical component is motivated and early-adopter growers who are keen to trial and implement the science,” Associate Professor Callow says.
The project builds on the WaterSmart Farms program which was initiated in 2021 and aims to develop knowledge and water planning tools for farmers in an agricultural area between Geraldton to Esperance.
“Farming in WA is a great story of innovation, the way they have changed how we grow food and fibre to work with our climate and soils,” Associate Professor Callow says.
“We’ve done really good work on improving cropping systems, we’ve been very clever in genetics and farming systems including world-leading agricultural research at UWA.
“Unfortunately for the past 20 to 40 years we’ve forgotten about the research and development smarts around water.”
Outlining the challenges, Associate Professor Callow says many of the 180,000 farms dams in WA’s South West were built in the 1960s and 70s, and since then rainfall and farming systems have changed a lot.
“Farming properties have become a lot bigger, and some have 40 to 60 dams that are all the same size. No-till farming systems create poor catchments, meaning dams run out of water at the same time,” he explains.
“We’re looking at growers who are building large key dams, where they enlarge an existing dam to make it a lot bigger and combine this with a very-high performing catchment to give a water supply that can get you through the challenging years.”
Image: Associate Professor Nik Callow on a field trip with researchers
The approach to improve water security has been two-fold with the team working to increase the catchment when there is rainfall and then suppress evaporation from the dams.
“We’re looking at methods to increase run-off by using repurposed tarpaulins, so instead of needing a rainfall of 10-to-20 millimetres you only need one-millimetre of rainfall; this is a game-changer for water reliability,” he explains.
“One example of keeping the captured water, has been work with the Water Corporation evaluating methods such as floating tessellated covers to reduce evaporation.”
Demonstration sites, building farm-based water planning tools, workshops, field days and industry training have helped drive change and adoption at the grass roots level.
“Our research and solutions are making a real impact, delivering options so people are not running out of water during a drought,” Associate Professor Callow says.
“Water can become very valuable and expensive during dry times, so adopting new water security methods has the potential to create a resilient and climate-adapted farm business.”
Read the full issue of the Summer 2024 edition of Uniview [Accessible PDF 5MB].