Farm dam accounting for healthy and safe agricultural catchments

Abstract

ABSTRACT Farm dams are essential infrastructure for many farming operations, including livestock watering and crop irrigation. With demand for food increasing, many farmers are looking to capture, store and use more runoff to achieve higher yields under worsening climate extremes. The aim of this article is to advance understanding of farm dams in catchments and the current tools for accounting for them, providing an opportunity to consider a new runoff storage accounting framework to support integrated policy. The Australian dam management setting is provided for context. A longitudinal cohort survey of 254 South Australian farmers provides a snapshot of farmer perceptions of dams and dam management behaviours. Farmers express increasing concern about the future availability of water, how much is allocated to the environment and how this is accounted for. Whilst the field of IWRM and others have integrated disciplines for improved water decision-making, so far there has been limited attention to how to incentivise improved farm dam management through links to farm accounting and business. This study proposes a preliminary framework for assisting dam decision-making across scales to support the health and safety of environments and communities.