Climate change, sustainable agriculture and
environmental information.
Snow Barlow

Climate Change ,sustainable agriculture
and environmental management
a regional perspective
Professor Snow Barlow ASTE, FAIAST
Melbourne School of Land and Environment
University of Melbourne

Climate Change is a „wicked‟ challenge
to regional communities
• Regional communities must move to an
„adaptation„ phase well before the full impact
is known or knowable
• Adaptation has to occur in an uncertain
policy and well as biophysical environments
– Water
– CPRS
– Climate change
• Adaptation is intuitively a „bottom up‟ process
but can only occur effectively in an
information rich environment

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(% of Water Right until 2006/7, then % of High Reliability Water Shares) /03
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Do we smooth this ?
/06
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Goulburn System Seasonal Allocations

The Broken River Catchment
onga
Yarraw annel
Ma in Ch
Broken R Go u
lbur
transmission n
Main oulburn
Broken Ck Rive
nel
r
Chan
losses losses
G
East
Waranga Basin
L Mokoan
Stuart Murray Canal
evaporation
losses
Goulburn Weir
Broken R Delivery to
operational irrigators
losses

Farms Rivers and Markets
Future with Aim for FRM
Past climate change contribution
No adaption Adaptive future
Improved
Available
water
ML ML ML operational
Optimisation by combining
efficiency
operations with markets
Smarter
Farm $ $ $ water use
productivity on farm
Better
matching of
available water
River health
to
environmental
needs

Farms Rivers and Markets –Dookie campus

Farms Plan: Structure and Linkages
Farming Dookie site characterisation
systems Farming systems that do and instrumentation
analysis more with less: Farm
(modelling) systems experimentation
(‘Dookie demonstrator’)
(CAT)
Evaluation
Farm and catchment
networks and innovation
research
Water resources, allocation and accounting
Groundwater and groundwater-surface water interaction
Ecology and ecological impacts
Common futures for whole-of-system performance improvement

Maintaining Dairy productivity with
reduced water
Preliminary modeling outcomes of dairy productivity and profitability with 100%,50%and
30% water allocations and changing forage systems and irrigation systems
MS kg/ha
3000
Op Profit $/ha
2500
2000
1500
1000
500
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Bottom up consultation an essential and
ongoing part of project
• Project Steering Committee-
– Farms liaison committee
– Rivers liaison committee
– Community liaison committee
• Experimental Farms phase
– Dairy advisory group
– Dryland/broadacre advisory group
– Horticulture/Viticulture advisory group

A final word from Charles Darwin
“It is not the strongest of the species that survives,
nor the most intelligent that survives.”
“It is the one that is the most adaptable to
change.”

The Environment
Institute