Resources

• 'Dairying Better'N'Better'
  Developed by the Dairy Research & Development Corporation 'Dairying Better'N'Better' provides specific tips on irrigation, soil and effluent management for dairy farms.

• Dairy Shed Water - How much do you use? - DPI Victoria (PDF 2.1MB)
  This booklet aims to help dairy farmers identify the volume of water currently used across a range of daily activities. The contents is a compilation of results from 1500 dairies.

Dairy shed water is classified as a commercial use so this booklet can also be used as a tool to assist farmers to:

• Have a greater understanding of the amount of water used on their farms.
• Identify water saving opportunities and encourage greater water use efficiency.
• Provide a more accurate figure for water corporations when updating an existing licence or applying for a new water licence.
• Work out the volume needed to purchase water if the farm is in a capped catchment.

• WISDAM
  The WISDAM model was developed to assist dairy farmers in south west Victoria in making decisions regarding investment in irrigation.

The model is used to predict the costs and incomes incurred in the future. WISDAM is essentially a discounted cash flow model used to assess the financial viability of various irrigation scenarios on a dairy farm.

WISDAM models a period of twenty years, with year one being the year of initial investment. The model assesses the financial viability of investment in irrigation by generating a range of measures including a net present value, a benefit:cost ratio, a pay-back period and a peak debt level.

• Queensland Water Use Efficiency Initiative Database
  This database contains references to journal articles, conference papers, reports and book chapters on irrigation and water use efficiency issues covering Australian research published from 1995 onwards.

• Dairy Effluent Calculator
  This calculator can help you plan and assess the sustainability of effluent irrigation areas in terms of nutrient loadings and crop/pasture nutrient requirements. Developed by Qld DPI&F.

• Weather stations
  There's a wide range of suppliers and distributors in Australia. Automatic Weather station start from approximately $5,000. There's a range of factors to consider apart from cost when purchasing an AWS.
• Automatic Weather Stations for agricultural and other applications
  This Bureau of Meteorology leaflet aims to assist members of the agricultural community and other groups interested in environmental monitoring in the purchase and operation of an AWS.

• Irrigation and Drainage Management Plan Development (IDMP) , NSW
  The development of Irrigation and Drainage Management Plans (IDMP) is encouraged and supported by the NSW Government.
• Dairying for Tomorrow
  A partnership project of Dairy Australia (DA), the National Land & Water Resources Audit and the Australian Dairy Farmers (ADF). This website provides information about Natural Resource Management in the Australian dairy industry.
• Irrigation Codes and Standards
  The Irrigation Association of Australia web site provides a listing of relevant Australian, New Zealand and International irrigation standards.
• Queensland Water Use Efficiency Initiative Database
  This database contains references to journal articles, conference papers, reports and book chapters on irrigation and water use efficiency issues covering Australian research published from 1995 onwards.
• Managing Dairy Effluent
  Victorian Government advice on how to keep dairy effluent on your property and not in water-ways. This material looks at some of the issues involved in getting effluent back onto pastures cost-effectively.
• Water$AVr™
  A non-toxic powder that can be applied to reservoirs or irrigation canals and ditches to prevent surface evaporation. WaterSavr™ claims to deliver significant reductions of free water surface evaporation, with up to 50% evaporation mitigation.
• E-vapCap®
  This system of evaporation control is based around a floating cover made from light-impervious polyethylene sheeting that is environmentally benign and will stop evaporation from large water storages.

• Aquator Automated Irrigation for Flood Irrigation
  Automated Water Management Australia (AWMA) has developed and produced the 2003 Savewater Award recipient Aquator automated irrigation system for flood irrigators.

This is the first time that a personal computer and radio telemetry has been combined to provide an irrigation management system that effectively replaces the imprecision of manual irrigation pactices. It can generate water savings of up to 40 percent.

The Aquator system is a comprehensive S.C.A.D.A. (supervisory control and data acquisition) program designed specifically for irrigators. Aquator allows both monitoring and controlling of all irrigation functions from a computer. Radio signals are sent from the computer out to an individual solar-powered control module in the paddock. These farm modules can be used for opening and closing bay outlets, operating channel stops, controlling & both electric and diesel pumps etc., opening the wheel door as well as monitoring water levels, flows through the wheel and soil moisture.

• Effluent management guidelines for dairy sheds and processing plants
  These documents and guidelines for the National Water Quality Management Strategy – were released by ANXECC and Agriculture and Resource Management Council of Australia and New Zealand.

• National Program for Sustainable Irrigation
  The Australian National Program for Sustainable Irrigation focuses research on the development and adoption of sustainable irrigation practices in Australian agriculture.

The Program aims to address critical emerging environmental management issues, while generating long-term economic and social benefits that ensure irrigation has a viable future. In the Knowledge Base ten years of irrigation research and development has been revisited and reviewed to identify lessons for irrigation sustainability.

• SWAGMAN Farm® Modeling System
  SWAGMAN Farm® modeling system is a computer modeling system developed by scientists at CSIRO Land and Water in Griffith to help determine cost-effective options to achieve farm scale water and salt balance within irrigation areas.

The model takes into account distribution of soils within the farm, potential landuses, crop evaporative requirements, current irrigation practices, leaching requirement, annual rainfall, rainfall runoff, leakage to deeper aquifers, depth to watertable, capillary upflow from shallow watertable, salt concentration of irrigation water, groundwater, and rainwater, and the economic returns from potential landuses.

The model can be used to:

• provide farmers with a method to simulate and assess various farm cropping scenarios in terms of economic return and environmental effects;
• determine environmentally optimal irrigation intensity; and
• encourage water use efficiency through water and salinity auditing in an integrated model.