1. Introduction
This paper identifies and ranks the waterbodies of national importance for irrigation now and those under investigation to supply additional irrigation in the next 20 years. The information is input into the Potential Waterbodies of National Importance project under the Water Programme of Action (WPoA) component of the Sustainable Development for New Zealand Programme of Action (SDPoA).
It should be noted that the report only identifies future irrigation development that is under any level of investigation at present. The stage of investigation varies among the specific proposals, with a small number having gained resource consent. In most cases, detailed feasibility investigations have not been undertaken yet. Development of these schemes would be subject to the usual processes under the Resource Management Act and other relevant legislation, as well as securing funding.
The potential area of irrigation and therefore of the value of some waterbodies for irrigation is limited by existing legislative conditions. For example, new water abstractions are limited by existing Water Conservation Orders on several waterbodies. In these cases, the true potential for additional irrigation is likely to be greater than is estimated here.
The definition of the national interest in irrigation has not been made in this study. A threshold of $5 million of additional farmgate GDP from the gross area irrigated from the waterbody in question was adopted arbitrarily for this study to limit the scope. It is recognised that there are many other waterbodies not investigated here that provide irrigation via individual takes and smaller community schemes and that have a national benefit from each additional unit of production. The most significant single waterbody from most regions has also been included, highlighting that the value added per hectare of irrigation is also a criteria to consider in the next stage of the Water Programme of Action. Water use has not been used as there is very little data available on actual water use.
A MAF Technical Paper recently released uses the same methodology to value the total economic contribution from all irrigation in New Zealand2. The results from it suggest the net contribution of all irrigation to GDP at the farmgate3 was in the order of $920 million in 2002/03. Total farmgate contribution of all primary production excluding forestry is estimated to be $8.1 billion in 2002/03 (SONZAF 20034), so irrigation contributed in the order of 11% of farmgate GDP in that year. This is produced from 475,700 ha of land, which is 3.9% of the12.1 million ha farmed (excluding forestry). The value of irrigation from the waterbodies of national importance is collectively a subset of this total contribution.
The findings in this report are not Government policy. It is intended that the report be considered in the context of the broader waterbodies of national importance work which explores a range of values connected with New Zealand’s waterbodies. It is anticipated that information on irrigation will be made available along with those on other values in a public discussion paper later in 2004.
2 The Economic Contribution of Irrigation to the New Zealand Economy - MAF Technical Paper 2004/01
3 Farmgate in this context means the revenue the farmer receives for the output minus all the costs incurred by the farm business in producing the output, eg fertiliser and accountancy costs would be taken off, but not personnel living expenses, tax or capital expenditure
4 Situation and Outlook for New Zealand Agriculture and Forestry, MAF Policy Dec 2003. Source: http://www.maf.govt.nz/mafnet/rural-nz/statistics-and-forecasts/sonzaf
Contact for Enquiries
Water Programme of Action
Ministry for the Environment
PO Box 10-362
Wellington
or
Water Programme of Action
Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry
PO Box 2526
Wellington
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