In Australia, Drought Threatens Natural Resources

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• JIM LEHRER:

  Next tonight: another in our ongoing series about food. Special correspondent Fred de Sam Lazaro reports on the record drought in Australia.

• FRED DE SAM LAZARO:

  The dust storms that blanketed Sydney in September were a vivid reminder of the drought gripping Australia, imperiling the livelihood of farmers and food exports this country and the world depend on. The eight-year dry spell has convinced many Australians that it's a signal of permanent climate change here.

  The epicenter is a huge agricultural area in southeastern Australia known as the Murray-Darling Basin, an area the size of France and Germany combined, named for Australia's two main rivers. Lake Boga, where fish, birds and water sport once thrived, has been bone-dry for almost two years.

  Ian Mason used to earn most of his income farming rice. Once a half-billion-dollar export crop, it has now virtually collapsed. He's had to switch entirely to wheat, a staple with strong global demand, but its return has been mixed, at best. This field here once had rice in it?

• IAN MASON, farmer:

  That's right. It's set up. It wouldn't have seen rice in this paddock for probably eight to 10 years.

• FRED DE SAM LAZARO:

  And wheat, which is a hardier, less thirsty crop, is also struggling?

• IAN MASON:

  Yes, that's right, because we just haven't had any rainfall. It's already started to die off from the bottom.

• FRED DE SAM LAZARO:

  More than direct rainfall, farmers like Mason rely on an extensive network of dams and canals first built during the Great Depression. It brought water and prosperity, and, out of an arid plain, spawned a food industry larger than California's. Farmers were lured by the promise of a reliable supply of water. They bought land and signed their farms onto the network by purchasing water rights. These entitlements added stress to the river system, but farmers like Ian Mason say they were taken for granted, until the water stopped coming. This year, Mason got 9 percent of his allocation. It's still better than last year and the year before, when he got no water from the canal system — zero. And the evidence of irrigation and no irrigation is plain to see here.

• IAN MASON:

  That's right.

• FRED DE SAM LAZARO:

  He spent his limited allocation to irrigate a part of his wheat crop. So, you can see the sharp contrast between the two soils.

• IAN MASON:

  This one's got some future, and this one's got no future, basically.

• FRED DE SAM LAZARO:

  And the crop with some future must find a new buyer. He had been selling it to neighbors who own a dairy farm. Ideally, you would sell this wheat to the McPhees, so that they can mix it with their silage and feed it to their dairy cows?

• IAN MASON:

  That's right, yes. Yes, that's what normally happens.

• FRED DE SAM LAZARO:

  But normal hasn't happened in a long time for Mason and his neighbors, Graham and Jane McPhee. They have decided to sell most of their prized cows.

  JANE MCPHEE, dairy farmer: We can't afford to feed them. We just can't afford to do it.

• FRED DE SAM LAZARO:

  The McPhees' fortunes have declined steadily, in tandem with their water allocation in recent years.

• JANE MCPHEE:

  The last few seasons, we have never had 100 percent entitlement. They have taken it back to sort of 82 percent, and then 64 percent, and I think last year around 3 percent. Is that right?

  GRAHAM MCPHEE, dairy farmer: That was the first time in three years we actually got an allocation. So…

• JANE MCPHEE:

  That's any water.

• FRED DE SAM LAZARO:

  Facing mounting debts and market vagaries that have pushed milk prices lower, the McPhees had to sell one of their last bankable assets, hoping to buy some more time. You have gone from one season to the next now for several, saying it's got to end now, it's got to end now. And it hasn't. Have you visited the — the ugly scenario in which it doesn't end next season? And — and what then?

• GRAHAM MCPHEE:

  Oh, we don't like to think like that.

• JANE MCPHEE:

  We're optimists.

• JANE MCPHEE:

  That's why were still here.

• GRAHAM MCPHEE:

  I don't know, either that, or bloody stupid, one of the two.