Griffith could become home to a ‘Centre of Excellence in Irrigation’ if a proposal is adopted by Griffith City Council.
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A report, to be put to council at Tuesday night’s meeting, sought $40,000 to develop a business case study for the centre.
Councillor Paul Rossetto, who originally proposed the concept, said it just made sense.
“We’re one of the biggest food production areas in the country,” Cr Rossetto said.
“We’ve also got the largest irrigation corporation with Murrumbidgee Irrigation.
“It’s time to put us under the ‘centre of excellence’ banner and be recognised as such.”
The centre would be a joint venture between Griffith City Council and Deakin University, which had taken over the CSIRO facility in Griffith as a field station for its Centre for Regional and Rural Futures (CeRRF). It was expected the initial $40,000 investment would help attract future government funding.
According to Cr Rossetto, people travelled from around the world to visit Griffith and see what irrigators were doing.
“This area is renowned as being great for irrigation,” Cr Rossetto said.
“They come to see what we have done with less water due to drought and how we’re handling things like the Murray-Darling Basin Plan.”
Cr Rossetto said the timing could not be better, as the centre would be useful to not only research irrigation, but also develop irrigation best practices.
“I’d like to see students and farmers be able to take courses here in Griffith on irrigation,” he said.
“We’ve had general security allocations reduced, which means fewer crops, so it’s important we look at ways to become more efficient.
“We need to be smarter and if we can do more with less we can lessen the pain.”
According to a draft document which will be presented to councillors with the proposal, the initiative “will help the irrigation and wider industries improve productivity per unit of water, mitigate environmental impacts, enter new markets and adjust to challenges and capitalise on opportunities arising from policy and structural reform relating to water”.
Cr Rossetto also hoped Deakin University’s research expertise would help replace CSIRO with local problems like blue-green algae.
“It’s very opportune,” Cr Rossetto said.
