ISHS Acta Horticulturae 792: V International Symposium on Irrigation of Horticultural Crops
THE FUTURE OF IRRIGATED PRODUCTION HORTICULTURE – WORLD AND AUSTRALIAN PERSPECTIVE |
| Author: | W.S. Meyer |
| Abstract:
More than a third of the world’s food comes from irrigated production. Increasing food and fibre needs continue to be more and more reliant on production from irrigated agriculture. In Australia, and many developed economies, irrigated horticulture has increasingly moved from a small farm, often peri-urban base, to large, increasingly specialised and intensive production systems. The overarching drivers are associated with market access, production and distribution systems and the associated financial costs and returns in each component. With large Asian developing economies and the increasing wealth of developed economies, markets increasingly demand consistent and continuous supplies of high quality, safe fruit and vegetables. There is increasing concentration of product distribution through multinational supermarket operators. This has increased the requirement for quality assurance from seedling to shelf and, in some cases this is complemented by accreditation schemes aimed at avoiding environmental and social exploitation. Production system change continues to be most responsive to those that generate more profit, make production easier and less labour intensive, and generally improve the asset value of the system. As a result, intensive systems have primarily been designed for economic efficiency with biophysical efficiency and offsite impacts often being poorly managed and certainly not costed. With increasing energy costs and the costs of natural resource maintenance being assigned more directly to users, production systems that are more diverse, more strongly controlled and make greater use of plant physiological traits will be part of the future of irrigated horticulture. To help meet these challenges it is time to increase research on more integrated regional and local water, energy, waste, production and community models in which irrigated horticulture for food production, amenity value and nutrient recycling is a feature. | |
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