The drivers associated with Murray-Darling Basin irrigators’ future farm adaptation strategies

Abstract

Irrigators in the Murray-Darling Basin will need to adapt to future uncertainty, because of changes in markets, industry structures and climate. Such adaptation can be classified as expansive, accommodating or contractive strategies. Expansive adaptation strategies expand irrigation, accommodating strategies modify existing processes or crops without changing the size of the irrigation component of the farm, whereas contractive strategies reduce irrigation. Using data from a 2015-16 survey of 1,000 southern Murray-Darling Basin irrigators, 19 distinct planned future adaptation strategies are aggregated into expansive, accommodating and contractive adaptation indexes. Seemingly Unrelated Regression was used to model influences associated with irrigators’ future adaptation. While 90% of all irrigators were planning for at least one form of farm adaptation, there is some evidence that they prefer expansive adaptation strategies over accommodating and contractive adaptation strategies. It was found that succession planning and past adaptation experience have a statistically significant influence on all planned adaptation indexes. The influence of financial, human, natural, physical and social capital varies between adaptation types, with financial capital variables the strongest statistically significant driver for accommodating adaptation. Expansive and contractive adaptation are more strongly impacted by human and social capital variables.