Growing rice on the Murrumbidgee River: Cultures, politics, and practices of food production and water use, 1900 to 2012

Journal of Australian Studies

Volumn 37, Issue 1, 2013, Pages 96-115

  O'Gorman, Emily ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF WOLLONGONG   (Australia)

Author keywords

Irrigation; Murrumbidgee River; Rice; Water politics

Indexed keywords

EID: 84874363018     PISSN: 14443058     EISSN: 18356419     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1080/14443058.2012.748673     Document Type: Article

References (137)

1. Lesley Head, Libby Robin, and Thom van Dooren gave invaluable comments and suggestions during this research and on early drafts of this article. Earlier versions of this paper were presented at the European Society for Environmental History conference and to the Institute of Australian Geographers conference in 2011. Comments by people in the audience greatly helped me to refine aspects of the research and arguments. The suggestions of the two anonymous referees were also very helpful in improving the final article. Lee-Anne McInerney at the Yanco Agricultural Institute library, NSW, provided important assistance in researching agricultural publications. This research was undertaken during a postdoctoral candidacy funded through the Australian Research Council (FL0992397).
2. "Marketing & Export, " Ricegrowers' Association of Australia, accessed March, 2012, http://www.rga.org.au/about-rice/marketing-export.aspx.The places rice is exported to vary from year to year, depending on markets and demand.
3. Aspects of rice history have occasionally been enrolled in these debates. For example, see Margaret Simons, "Sustaining a Nation: A River Journey From Basin to Bowl, " Griffith Review 27 (Autumn 2010): 13-30, 20, and 25.
4. Kate Jennings, "Water Under the Bridge: A Guide to the Murray-Darling Basin, " Monthly, October, 2011, http://www.themonthly. com.au/guide-murray-darling-basin-water-under-bridge-kate-jennings-4012.
5. Marnie Haig-Muir, "The Wakool Wartime Rice-growing Project and its Impact on Regional Development, " Australian Economic History Review 39.2 (September 1996): 56-76.
6. "Water and the Murray-Darling Basin-A Statistical Profile, 2000-01 to 2005-06 (4610.0.55.007), " Australian Bureau of Statistics, accessed March, 2012, http://www.abs. gov.au/ausstats/abs@.nsf/Latestproducts/DC0DC8AAE4ECD727CA2574A5001F803A? opendocument.
7. Don Garden, Droughts, Floods and Cyclones: El Niños that Shaped Our Colonial Past (North Melbourne: Australian Scholarly Publishing, 2009), 1-7.
8. Emily O'Gorman, "Unnatural River, Unnatural Floods? Regulation and Responsibility on the Murray River in the 1950s, " Australian Humanities Review 48 (2010): 87-107.
9. "Water and the Murray-Darling Basin, " Australian Bureau of Statistics.
10. Richard Kingsford, "Review: Ecological Impacts of Dams, Water Diversions and River Management on Floodplain Wetlands in Australia, " Austral Ecology 25 (2000): 109-27.
11. Murray-Darling Basin Authority, Guide to the Proposed Basin Plan: Overview: Volume 1 (Canberra: Murray-Darling Basin Authority, 2010), 132-34.
12. R. Kingsford and R. Thomas, "Destruction of Wetlands and Waterbird Populations by Dams and Irrigation on the Murrumbidgee River in Arid Australia, " Environmental Management 34.3 (2004): 383-96.
13. John J. Pigram, Australia's Water Resources: From Use to Management (Collingwood, VIC: CSIRO Publishing, 2006), 135 and 151-72.
14. Kingsford and Thomas, "Destruction of Wetlands and Waterbird Populations, " 394.
15. Murray-Darling Basin Authority, Proposed Basin Plan (Canberra: Murray-Darling Basin Authority, 2011), 145.
16. See also, Adam Barclay, "A Sunburned Grain, " Rice Today, April/June 2010, 9, 12-17.
17. Anonymous interview, August 4, 2010.
18. "Water and the Murray-Darling Basin, " Australian Bureau of Statistics.
19. "Agricultural State Profile, New South Wales, 2003-04 (7123.1.55.001), " Australian Bureau of Statistics, accessed March, 2012, http://www.abs.gov.au/Ausstats/abs@.nsf/ Lookup/975A0F9AADA04961CA2570430078D77B?opendocument.
20. "Growing Rice, " Ricegrowers' Association of Australia, accessed March, 2012, http:// www.rga.org.au/about-rice/growing-rice.aspx. Today, the average size of a rice farm is 400 ha or 988 acres.
21. "Agricultural State Profile, " Australian Bureau of Statistics.
22. Libby Robin, How a Continent Created a Nation (Sydney: UNSW Press, 2007), 138-51.
23. K. Lewis, ed., Rice & Men: Queensland Rice Industry, 1869-1986 (Ayr, QLD: Lower Burdekin Rice Producers Co-operative Association, 1988).
24. "Annual Report 2009, " SunRice, accessed March, 2012, http://www.sunrice.com.au/ shareholders-growers/company-reports, 17.
25. This Committee coordinates three main bodies: SunRice Ricegrowers' Co-operative Limited, which processes and markets rice products; the Rice Marketing Board for the State of NSW, which is responsible for rice storage infrastructure; and the Ricegrowers' Association of Australia, which represents rice farmers and also develops policy and research programs.
26. "Growing Rice, " Ricegrowers' Association of Australia.
27. Garry Griffith and John Mullen, "Pricing-to-market in NSW Rice Export Markets, " Australian Journal of Agricultural and Resource Economics 45.3 (2001): 323.
28. "Water and the Murray-Darling Basin, " Australian Bureau of Statistics. In 2009-2010, 100 percent of irrigated water use for rice was in the Murray-Darling Basin: "1301.0-Year Book Australia, 2009-10, " Australian Bureau of Statistics, accessed March, 2012, http://www.abs.gov.au/AUSSTATS/abs@.nsf/Lookup/1301.0Chapter3042009%E2%80% 9310.
29. "Waste Water-Is Aussie Rice Worth the Resources?, " ANU News, July 28, 2008, http:// news.anu.edu.au/?p-547.
30. "Marketing & Export, " Ricegrowers' Association of Australia.
31. "Principal Agricultural Commodities, Australia, Preliminary, 2007-08 (7111.0), " Australian Bureau of Statistics, Media Release, accessed March 7, 2012, http://www. abs.gov.au/AUSSTATS/abs@.nsf/mediareleasesbyReleaseDate/5EF329D425384E9CCA 257669001DF7C2?OpenDocument.
32. ABARES, Australian Commodity Statistics 2010, 199.
33. "Water Efficiency, " Ricegrowers' Association of Australia, accessed March 6, 2012, http://www.rga.org.au/rice-environment/water-efficiency.aspx.
34. E. Humphreys, et al., "Integration of Approaches to Increasing Water Use Efficiency in Rice-based Systems in Southeast Australia, " Field Crops Research 97 (2006): 19-33. Research is being undertaken by the International Rice Research Institute in the Philippines on reductions of water needs for rice; it could be argued that with greater research into this aspect of rice growing, further gains are likely.
35. Adam Barclay, "A Sunburned Grain, " Rice Today, April/June 2010, 9, 2, 12-17.
36. Lindsay Falvey, "History of Rice in Southeast Asia and Australia, " in Rice: Origin, Antiquity and History, ed. S.D. Sharma (New York: CRC Press and Science Publishers, 2012), 183-224.
37. Brian Phillips, Justin Winton, and Yin H. Mai, Australian Commodities "Rice: Opening North East Asian Rice Markets: Implications for Australia, " 1.2 (June 1994): 234-46.
38. Trevor Langford-Smith and John Rutherford, Water and Land: Two Case Studies in Irrigation (Canberra: Australian National University Press, 1966), 31.
39. "Rice-Growing in New South Wales, " Agricultural Gazette of New South Wales, November 1916, 799-800.
40. "Rice Culture in New South Wales, " Agricultural Gazette of New South Wales, April 1920, 232.
41. Gary Lewis, An Illustrated History of the Riverina Rice Industry (Leeton, NSW: Ricegrowers' Co-operative Limited, 1994), 23-48. Takasuka and his son were recruited by the Department of Agriculture to trial their varieties after trials with Indian varieties at the Grafton Experiment Farm failed.
42. George Main, Heartland: The Regeneration of Rural Place (Sydney: UNSW Press, 2005), 47-52.
43. Adele Wessell, "Dairy Chains: Consumer Foodways and Agricultural Landscapes, " Coolabah 5 (2011): 251-60, especially 255.
44. Falvey, "History of Rice in Southeast Asia and Australia, " 216-17.
45. Basinski, "A Review of Rice Growing in the Northern Territory and Western Australia, " 1.
46. Richard Waterhouse, The Vision Splendid: A Social and Cultural History of Rural Australia (Fremantle, WA: Curtin University Press, 2005), 60-66.
47. C.J. Lloyd, Either Drought or Plenty: Water Development and Management in New South Wales (Parramatta, NSW: Department of Water Resources New South Wales, 1988), 201-12.
48. Langford-Smith and Rutherford, Water and Land, 33-43.
49. Lloyd, Either Drought or Plenty, 209.
50. Lloyd, Either Drought or Plenty, 206 and 208.
51. Langford-Smith and Rutherford, Water and Land, 33-43.
52. Lloyd, Either Drought or Plenty, 199 and 209-10.
53. Langford-Smith and Rutherford, Water and Land, 25-29.
54. Lloyd, Either Drought or Plenty, 198.
55. Langford-Smith and Rutherford, Water and Land, 30-32 and 50-51.
56. Lloyd, Either Drought or Plenty, 210.
57. Langford-Smith and Rutherford, Water and Land, 44-46.
58. Quoted in Lloyd, Either Drought or Plenty, 198.
59. Lloyd, Either Drought or Plenty, 198.
60. J.L. Trefle, Minister for Agriculture, quoted in Lloyd, Either Drought or Plenty, 205.
61. J.M. Powell, Watering the Garden State: Water, Land and Community in Victoria, 1834-1988 (Sydney: Allen & Unwin, 1989), 41.
62. Waterhouse, The Vision Splendid, 18-33.
63. E. O'Gorman, Flood Country: An Environmental History of the Murray-Darling Basin (Collingwood, VIC: CSIRO Publishing, 2012), 119-32.
64. E.W. O'Sullivan, quoted in Lloyd, Either Drought or Plenty, 199.
65. Since the 1960s, the idea that irrigation insulates farmers from drought has been heavily critiqued and is mostly considered to be unfounded. These critiques were initially spearheaded by economist B.R. Davidson. See B.R. Davidson, AustraliaWet or Dry? The Physical and Economic Limits to the Expansion of Irrigation (Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 1969).
66. B.R. Davidson, The Northern Myth: A Study of the Physical and Economic Limits to Agricultural and Pastoral Development in Tropical Australia (Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 1965).
67. Lloyd, Either Drought or Plenty, 211-12.
68. Langford-Smith and Rutherford, Water and Land, 49-52.
69. Waterhouse, The Vision Splendid, 200-201.
70. W.R. Cowper, The Barren Jack Scandal and Its Effect on the MIA (Bonnells Bay, NSW: W.R. Cowper, 1987), 23.
71. Lloyd, Either Drought or Plenty, 210.
72. Lloyd, Either Drought or Plenty, 210.
73. W.R. Watkins, "Rice-growing. Its Possibilities on the Murrumbidgee Irrigation Areas, " Agricultural Gazette of New South Wales, October 1926, 741-48, 741.
74. "Rice Culture in New South Wales, " Agricultural Gazette, 232.
75. Lewis, An Illustrated History of the Riverina Rice Industry, 34.
76. Ian Tyrrell, True Gardens of the Gods: Californian-Australian Environmental Reform, 1860-1930 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999), 159.
77. Tyrrell, True Gardens of the Gods, 4-10.
78. See also Tyrrell, True Gardens of the Gods, 121.
79. Lloyd, Either Drought or Plenty, 119.
80. Katrina Proust, "Appendix E, Hugh McKinney: A Colonial Engineer, " in "Learning from the Past for Sustainability: Towards an Integrated Approach" (PhD thesis, Australian National University, September 2004), 293-312.
81. A. Deakin, Indian Irrigation.
82. Heather Goodall, "Digging Deeper: Ground Tanks and the Elusive Indian Archipelago, " in Beyond the Black Stump: Histories of Outback Australia, ed. Alan Mayne (Kent Town, South Australia: Wakefield Press, 2008), 129-60, especially 158.
83. Lloyd, Either Drought or Plenty, 175.
84. Tyrrell, True Gardens of the Gods, 121-43.
85. Tyrrell, True Gardens of the Gods, 122.
86. Proust, "Learning from the Past for Sustainability, " 153-63.
87. Tyrrell, True Gardens of the Gods, 4-5.
88. Tyrrell, True Gardens of the Gods, 172-73.
89. Powell, The Emergence of Bioregionalism in The Murray-Darling Basin, 48-50.
90. Lloyd, Either Drought or Plenty, 215.
91. Langford-Smith and Rutherford, Water and Land, 54-72.
92. Tyrrell, True Gardens of the Gods, 160.
93. Lloyd, Either Drought or Plenty, 215-18.
94. It is unclear whether John Brady brought these varieties back from California, ordered them, or someone else from the Department of Agriculture ordered them. A.N. Shepherd, "Rice-growing on the Murrumbidgee Irrigation Areas, " Agricultural Gazette of New South Wales, August 1923, 583-87.
95. L.J. Green, "Field Experiments with Rice, " and "Yanco Irrigation Area, " Agricultural Gazette of New South Wales, August 1924, 560-64.
96. Rice: The World's Main Food Crop, Royal Easter show pamphlet (Sydney: New South Wales Department of Agriculture, 1965), 7.
97. Growing Rice in New South Wales (Sydney: New South Wales Government Printer, c. 1948), 2.
98. Lloyd, Either Drought or Plenty, 217.
99. Watkins, "Rice-growing. Its Possibilities on the Murrumbidgee Irrigation Areas, " 748.
100. See "Crops Rice, Miscellaneous, " (1969-75), VPRS 3477/P0001/95, Public Records Office Victoria (PROV); "Crops Rice, Miscellaneous, " (1947-69), VPRS 3477/P0001/95, PROV; "Crops Rice, Miscellaneous, " VPRS 3477/P0001/95, (1927-47). These archives contain Victorian State Government responses to enquiries about rice growing in that state. Many of these letters and memos explain that rice is not grown because of concerns about water and the agreement with NSW.
101. Watkins, "Rice-growing. Its Possibilities on the Murrumbidgee Irrigation Areas, "747.
102. Watkins, "Rice-growing. Its Possibilities on the Murrumbidgee Irrigation Areas, " 741.
103. Ricegrowers' Co-operative Mills, Rice in Australia: A History of Success (n.p., c. 1974), 2.
104. Watkins, "Rice-growing. Its Possibilities on the Murrumbidgee Irrigation Areas, " 747.
105. SMH, July 13, 1932, 9.
106. Warwick Anderson, The Cultivation of Whiteness: Science, Health and Racial Destiny in Australia (Carlton South, VIC.: Melbourne University Press, 2002), especially 97-122.
107. Watkins, "Rice-growing. Its Possibilities on the Murrumbidgee Irrigation Areas, " 747.
108. "Rice Statistics. 1938-57" and "Agriculture-Division of Marketing and Economics. Correspondence, 1923-73, " 200. 10/25451. 384B, Sate Records NSW.
109. James C. Scott, "An Approach to the Problems of Food Supply in Southeast Asia During World War Two, " in Agriculture and Food Supply in the Second World War, ed. Bernd Martin and Alan S. Milward (St. Katharinen, Germany: Scripta Mercaturae Verlag, 1985), 269-82.
110. Paul H. Kratoska, "Commercial Rice Cultivation and the Regional Economy of Southern Asia, " in Food and Globalization: Consumption, Markets and Politics in the Modern World, ed. Alexander Nützenadel and Frank Trentmann (Oxford: Berg, 2008), 75-90, especially 78.
111. Rice: The World's Main Food Crop, 8.
112. Haig-Muir, "The Wakool Wartime Rice-growing Project, " 66-69.
113. Lewis, An Illustrated History of the Riverina Rice Industry, 109-10.
114. Haig-Muir, "The Wakool Wartime Rice-growing Project, " 69-70.
115. "Rice Growing in Papua and New Guinea, " Agricultural Gazette of New South Wales, June 1953, 294-97, especially 294.
116. "The Effect of the 1944-45 Drought on Production, " 200. 10/25484. 63/311, State Records NSW.
117. "Rice Statistics. 1938-57" and "Agriculture-Division of Marketing and Economics. Correspondence, 1923-73. "
118. "Rice Growing in Papua and New Guinea, " 294.
119. J.R. McNeill, Something New Under the Sun: An Environmental History of the Twentieth Century World (New York: Norton, 2000), 219-21.
120. Alexander Nützenadel and Frank Trentmann, "Introduction, " in Nützenadel and Trentmann, Food and Globalization, 1-18, especially 11-12.
121. "Rice Growing in Papua and New Guinea, " 294.
122. "Rice Growing in Papua and New Guinea, " 294.
123. Haig-Muir, "The Wakool Wartime Rice-growing Project, " 64-66.
124. Rice: The World's Main Food Crop, 9.
125. O'Gorman, Flood Country, 137.
126. Robin, How a Continent Created a Nation, 125-26 and 138-43.
127. K. Lewis, "Introduction: Part I, " in Lewis, Rice & Men: Queensland Rice Industry, 1.
128. Basinski, "A Review of Rice Growing in the Northern Territory and Western Australia, " 1-3.
129. Falvey, "History of Rice in Southeast Asia and Australia, " 217-18.
130. McNeill, Something New Under the Sun, 219-26.
131. Kratoska, "Commercial Rice Cultivation and the Regional Economy of Southern Asia, " 86-87.
132. Cameron Muir, "Feeding the World, " Griffith Review 27 (Autumn 2010): 59-73.
133. Lewis, An Illustrated History of the Riverina Rice Industry, 168-211.
134. Falvey, "History of Rice in Southeast Asia and Australia, " 220.
135. Haig-Muir, "The Wakool Wartime Rice-growing Project, " 72-73.
136. Main, Heartland, 184-89.
137. Daniel Connell, Water Politics in the Murray-Darling Basin (Canberra: Federation Press, 2007), 17.