The outlook may be grim for many farmers along the Murray River system, but irrigators at Menindee Lakes and the Lower Darling in western NSW are among the few with good water allocations -- so good that they will make more money out of selling the water than farming with it.
The Lower Darling irrigation community might be small, with a total of 38,000 megalitres, compared with the NSW Murray, which has 175,000ML, but it will play an important role in the water trade this year.
Tandou, a farm just south of Menindee Lakes, grows a wide range of crops as well as wine grapes, stone fruit and citrus. CEO Guy Kingwill has been weighing up how to make the best use of 10,000ML of water it did not use last year, which is still held in Menindee Lakes.
"We carried that over into this year, with the concept of taking it into a crop in the summer, cotton or sorghum," he said.
Then several weeks ago the NSW Department of Water announced Lower Darling water holders could sell their water down the system to Murray irrigators.
"That forced us back to the drawing board, to ask: now, what is the best return? In the current market it would be to trade that water," Mr Kingwill said.