Parched land - Attempting to ease Australia's drought

Australia is the world's driest inhabited continent. Although parts of northern Australia enjoy high and regular rainfalls, sometimes associated with monsoon and cyclonic conditions, parts of Western Australia and Southern Australia suffer from severe rainfall deficiencies.

For a long time, such wide variation in rainfall across the country has resulted in an ambivalent attitude to water management. With its relatively small population - just under 21 million in 2007 - Australia has historically feared invasion from the north. That fear has waned over the past 30 years to be gradually replaced by a very different fear - a water shortage.

This concern is being compounded by a current drought. The 'Big Dry' has been ongoing since 2001 and is one of the worst that Australia has experienced for 200 years, with only the 'federation drought' of 1898 to 1903 rivalling it. It has particularly affected southwestern Western Australia, much of Victoria and western New South Wales and central Queensland, where rainfall has been 24 per cent below historical averages for a 70-month period.

The ongoing drought is of most concern to Australia's agricultural sector. Australia's wealth has traditionally been built on agricultural and mineral exports, with these two sectors currently comprising approximately seven per cent of gross domestic product. However, in much of inland Australia, rain has always been a scarce resource. Should rainfall continue to decline, this could have a significant negative effect, particularly given the importance of water to the agricultural sector. From 2004 to 2005, Australia's 32,244 irrigated farms accounted for less than one per cent of total agricultural landholdings, but produced 28 per cent of the gross value of agricultural production.

Moreover, 99 per cent of the 2.4 million km2 (out of a land mass of 7.7 million) devoted to sheep, cattle and active cropping (including wheat) rely on the vagaries of the climate. Yet the numbers of sheep and cattle are dependent on land quality, unpredictable rainfall and increasingly on feed supplementation, grown elsewhere in areas where rainfall is usually more reliable.

This could explain why the number of sheep in Australia continues to fall, from 100 million in 2003 to 92 million in 2006. Meat cattle numbers have remained relatively static, currently at 26 million, although drought-affected farmers sell off and then repurchase livestock as weather conditions improve. Two thirds of Australia's 2.8 million milk cattle are in eastern Victoria, where there are good rainfalls and efficient operators. 404 of 2,033 words