An eight per cent opening allocation has left some district irrigators less than impressed.
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Rice farmer Chint Quarisa was disappointed with the low number, a number he expected to be higher.
“To say only eight per cent at this time of the year, when the dams are pretty healthy, it's very disappointing,” he said.
“To tell you the truth, I was expecting around 25 per cent first up for general security.”
He said the number bucked historical trends about water allocation.
“Normally whatever percentage the dams are, we get that in allocations,” he said,
“So if they were 60 percent full you'd normally get around 50-60 percent allocations.
“This year they are around that 40 percent mark so I was expecting at least 25 percent.”
The dam heights as of June 25 were 27 per cent for the Blowering Dam and 45 per cent for the Burrinjuck Dam.
He said that farmers haven’t been treated the way it was originally envisioned when the dams were built.
“Originally those Blowering and Burrinjuck Dams were built to supply the Murrumbidgee Irrigation Area and then for the Coleambally area,” he said.
“Now we’re getting the last bite of the cherry.
“I'm a rice farmer so I produce rice and wheat and if you would have said to me ten years ago that I'd be growing rice using high security water, I would of said you're bloody mad.
“We're supposed to produce food for Australia and I think they've just lost site of that.”
He said the way that the percentage is determined needed to be looked at.
“They're ultra conservative in their thinking and they always hide behind this big complicated equation,” he said.
“Put simply, I think the equation needs looking at.
“As farmers we can survive against nature, we can survive against the market prices for our commodities no problem, you get your ups and downs in both.
“When you start talking a man made drought that's ongoing, you can't survive.”