Water productivity accounting in Australian agriculture: The need for cost-informed decision-making

Abstract

<jats:p> Primary producers need strategies and tools to assist in monitoring water use with a view to improving physical and financial productivity. The purpose of this research is to integrate farmer financial accounting data with soil moisture and climate data to better account for water use on farm. Farm-accounting systems, if present, lack the sophistication to allow growers to analyze use, loss, and productivity of water. Water-accounting technologies, if present, do not readily link to business systems to provide the optimal real-time financial decision-making data, nor the necessary context for new technologies to support a broader integrated approach to water management. Findings of desk-based technology benchmarking suggest elements required include real-time sensory data integration that allows for strategic allocation to the full suite of direct and indirect water costs. Key actor interview and producer surveys highlight demand for a farm business integrated water productivity tool and findings from field data collected in a potato case study provide demonstration of how irrigation decision-making can be supported by the crucial link between producers’ business systems and sensing technology. </jats:p>

Embedding smart technologies in accounting to meet global irrigation challenges

“…Indeed, many voluntary processes for environmental accounting have turned out to be passing fads (De Villiers and van Staden, 2006). Indeed, water accounting is one such trend that can have different levels of benefit to different users, but is often of limited utility at the farm level, being too broad in scale/focus (Vardon et al , 2007) or too complicated to implement (Tingey-Holyoak et al , 2019; Garrido-Rubio et al , 2020). Water accounting trends have so far been inefficient also largely because of its lack of integration with economic and financial indicators that can reflect the value of different water-related decisions (Seidl et al , 2020; Tingey-Holyoak et al , 2019).…”

“…The innovations necessary for costing water resource inputs are major challenges for the sector to develop further (Jack, 2009; Young and McColl, 2009; Tingey-Holyoak et al , 2019, 2020). Primary production comprises activities and processes which not only demand high water volume allocations from multiple sources, but also hide water usage and costs at various stages [Young and McColl, 2009; Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations, 2017].…”

The need for accounting-integrated data streams for scenario-based planning in primary production: responding to COVID-19 and other crises

“…Some of these are able to provide basic scenario functionality; however, unless full farm management software is used, very few have data integrated with any sophistication. Furthermore, even full farm management software is limited in its ability to integrate accounting and biophysical or socio-economic data (Tingey-Holyoak et al , 2019, 2020).…”

“…Tools such as direct monitoring of soil through sensors, on-site weather tracking, yield mapping and market data analysis have been responsible for improved production and decision-making outcomes in a variety of cases. However, these have largely fallen short of better modelling water-related scenarios linked to costing and accounting because the information systems and agtech currently available leave out close links to farm financial accounting (Tingey-Holyoak et al , 2019).…”

“…Data can be across time periods of short-, medium- and longer-term decision needs and can be future oriented for scenario modelling in times of crisis. This includes overlapping areas of weather and soil moisture and temperature data in the short term, water use, plant and soil behaviour in the medium term and trends in irrigation and rainfall, crop stress and other watering variables over the longer term (Tingey-Holyoak et al , 2019). Indeed, information such as socio-economic impacts of pandemic and market variables can also be included.…”