IrriCalc worries
Public submissions closed today for the Marlborough Environment Plan (MEP). Question: Is it possible IrriCalc can predict water requirements of my crop?
Investigating the origin of IrriCalc, I uncovered a reference to a publication: ‘‘FAO Irrigation and Drainage Paper, No. 56 - Crop Evapotranspiration’’.
This ‘‘scholarly document’’ from the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations was part of the research done creating IrriCalc.
Answer: IrriCalc is a good tool that covers the basics.
Great effort and development justifiably invested; but perhaps it should not be the tool by which district councils make final determinations on Resource Allocations or reductions in current water-take rates.
IrriCalc, as amazing as it is, doesn’t currently (as tested) take into consideration most of the crop-specifics quoted above.
It asks one question about your crop with only seven possible answer options. Zero follow-up questions or drop-down menus. Selecting ‘‘Grapes’’, it proceeded to make assumptions about the variety, density, canopy-height, ground-coverings, etc.
Heartbreaking as it prescribed more cuts in our water resources.
Everyone I have spoken with has had similar results with IrriCalc, and we are fearful.
Can we continue growing world class wines, or will the implementation of IrriCalc and the MEP be the poison-pill to wine growing in Marlborough? promotion. Maybe a new position as a ‘‘whiter outer’’ could be made available through council.
The designers of these signs are obviously very ‘Smart and well Connected’ and in line with ‘Marlborough’s Destination’, but their work put forward is lacking practicality and common sense.
These creations would be just another disaster as so many other bloopers instigated by the outgoing council over the past few years. Actually this kind of folly reminds me strongly of the bus shelter on State Highway 1 with the glass roof sloping the wrong way.
It was erected by this council at a cost of $250,000, is hardly used and of course was funded by the rate payers. Councillors of course would be challenging this fact by stating from which exotic sounding accounts that money came from and that it practically didn’t cost anything.
The real fact is that there is no free lunch and it is always the ratepayer who comes out second best.