Best Management Guidelines for Sustainable Irrigated Agriculture

Foreword

This is one of a series of 10 technical bulletins, which report the detail of projects commissioned by MAF Policy on sustainable irrigation.

This work arises as part of MAF’s contribution towards Government’s "Sustainable Land Management Strategy."

The projects in this series broadly divide into two groups, technical irrigation design factors and management factors. A key issue identified by farmers at the onset of this work was that to ensure irrigation could operate in sustainable ways physically and for the environment, it also had to be profitable irrigation.

The emphasis on water use efficiency and cost effectiveness of plant and management, which has arisen from this, has been developed throughout the research. It is clear that win/win situations are possible. Improvements for both environmental and farm profitability objectives can be achieved.

More efficient ways of monitoring and managing water use on farms are described in the series.

There is a large amount of base data and technical information in these papers which is likely to be helpful background for designers, consultants and local and regional authorities.

Much of this information is also being incorporated into a simpler National Irrigation Handbook. This is being designed as a ready reference for farmers and commercial firms, and will be available in 2001.

An overall summary of the technical reports in this series and copies of the reports themselves can be obtained from: Information Bureau, Ministry of Agriculture & Forestry, PO Box 2526, Wellington.

A B Walker
Director
Policy Information & Regions

The other technical bulletins in this series are:

00/01 A Summary of Bulletins 00/2 – 00/11

00/02 A Survey of Farmers’ Approaches to & Perceptions about Irrigation Management

00/03 Indicators of Sustainable Irrigated Agriculture

00/04 Field Testing Indicators of Sustainable Irrigated Agriculture

00/05 Best Management Guidelines for Sustainable Irrigated Agriculture

00/06 Testing of Irrigation Best Management Guidelines 1997-1998

00/07 Testing of Irrigation Best Management Guidelines 1998-1999

00/08 Benchmark Data on Sustainable Irrigation Indicators

00/09 Designing Effective and Efficient Irrigation Systems

00/10 Financial Benefits of Making Improvements to an Irrigation System: A Case Study