Water spraying from a large irrigation machine to keep a potato crop growing healthily.
Photo by
georgeclerk
As the El Nino event continues to develop, the Bureau of Meteorology’s forecasts of below average rainfall and above average temperatures for south-eastern Australia remain consistent for the coming months.
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This seasonal outlook paired with the low water allocations recently announced mean many growers may be considering whether they will irrigate, buy, or sell water this season.
With inflated fertiliser and fuel input costs already biting into margins, and favourable conditions thus far resulting in high yield potential crops across the region, this season’s decisions weigh much more heavily.
The Irrigation Farmers’ Network has developed an Irrigation Profit Calculator spreadsheet tool to allow farmers to fully comprehend the implications of volatile input prices on their crop gross margins.
Growers can edit the number of passes, input rates, costs, expected yield and price received for both a high input irrigated crop and lower cost dryland crop.
The tool incorporates the opportunity cost of not trading owned water or the realised cost of buying temporary water at chosen values.
This allows growers to run multiple scenarios with differing outcomes and management decisions to better understand the impacts on gross margins and help set price points to trigger irrigation decisions.
Crunch your own numbers by downloading the ‘To Irrigate or Not – Irrigation Profit Calculator’ within the Tools & Resources, Irrigation page of the Irrigation Farmers Network website - www.irrigationfn.com.au/irrigation.
