The cover feature article in "New Scientist" magazine this week is "The parched planet". It quotes the following agricultural water requirements. To produce:

* 1 kilo coffee - 20,000 litres
* 1 quarter-pounder hamburger - 11,000 litres
* 1 250 gram cotton t-shirt - 7,000 litres
* 1 kilo cheese - 5,000 litres
* 1 kilo rice - 5,000 litres
* 1 litre milk - 2,000 litres
* 1 kilo wheat - 1,000 litres

The article points out that many countries (including Australia) are surviving by depleting artesian water supplies which, while being a nominally renewable resource, are in many cases being renewed at nothing like the rate at which they are being used up.

Expansion plans for Cubby Station announced last December could make it the world's largest cotton producer, http://www.abc.net.au/am/content/2006/s1547290.htm. Effectively, growing cotton for export is exporting water. Cotton futures for March delivery are currently priced at $US1.30 a kilo (58 cents/pound). A kilo of cotton represents 28,000 litres of water so the return is less that 5 US cents/kilolitre (about 7 cents).

Sydney residents currently pay $A1.20 a kilolitre. Something is not quite right.

There is a previous On Line Opinion article on Australia's water at http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=857

I would agree with you MikeM something is wrong.

What you are saying is that the products are created and consumed by agriculture.

Nothing could be further from the truth.

Agriculture produces all of the above products at the demand of almost exclusively, the urban areas, as very few people are in the regions involved with agriculture.

What this means , is the products get produced by the demand from the urban areas, not demand from farmers, so lets put the blame for the water use where it lies.

Secondly, most of the wealth created by an agriculture product is retained by the urban areas. Let’s take wheat;
• Farm gate price is between $125 and $150 a tonne,
• but the wheat- bix you buy is in the $,000’s
I ask who gets the most benefit from the pipeline of production for turning wheat into weet-bix.

The other side of the equation, is that when wheat leaves the farm gate
• It is world market priced, i.e. will be bought at the same price by the worlds poorly paid factory workers.
• When it is weet-bix, it is far from being competitive to the same customers.
• I ask, what happens after the farm gate to create such an uncompetitive price, from a truly competitive primary price?

As was mentioned in the postings, the city don’t use a lot of water, they just contaminate it and discard it. By use, I mean transpired through plants that have a “new wealth”, such as food as a result, for domestic and export use.

"Agriculture produces all of the above products at the demand of almost exclusively, the urban areas, as very few people are in the regions involved with agriculture.

"What this means , is the products get produced by the demand from the urban areas, not demand from farmers, so lets put the blame for the water use where it lies."

It is generally true that there is a demand for what farmers produce, although as we saw when the wool market collapsed some years ago and more recently when there was a world surplus of sugar, many farmers are unwilling or unable to stop producting commodities that nobody wants much.

But it's not me or people like me sitting in Australian cities that are the major consumers.

From the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, dated May 2005, http://www.dfat.gov.au/aib/competitive_economy.html :

QUOTE
1 Australia is one of the world’s largest exporters of beef. The value of Australia’s beef and veal exports totalled $3.8 billion in 2003–04.
2 Australia is the world’s third-largest exporter of dairy products. In 2003–04 Australia’s exports of dairy products were valued at $2.2 billion.
3 Australia is the world’s largest wool producer and exporter. In 2003–04 Australia’s shorn wool production was 475 000 tonnes and wool exports were valued at nearly $2.8 billion.
4 The major grains and oilseeds produced in Australia include wheat, barley, canola, oats and sorghum. Australia is the world’s second-largest wheat exporter and exported 15.2 million tonnes of wheat in 2003–04.
5 Australia’s key cotton export markets include China, Japan, the Republic of Korea and Thailand. Australia’s raw cotton exports in 2003–04 were valued at just under $1 billion.
6 Sugar is one of Australia’s major exported crops with exports of around 4 million tonnes in 2003–04, worth around $1 billion...
END QUOTE

$1 billion of cotton exports at 7 cents return per kilolitre of water represents the export, in effect, of 14 million megalitres of water a year. (For comparison, Sydney's main water supply source, the Warragamba Dam, has a capacity when full of 2 million megalitres, http://www.macarthurtourism.com.au/php/macarthurAdmin.php?section=sub_selection&cat_id=3&subcat=Dams .)

Perhaps, instead of paying $1.20 per kilolitre for his water Mike M would prefer to revert to the 'good old days' and send we females out to cart his daily water supply for him. Or should the price be charged at 'bottled water prices' i.e. $4,000.00 per tonne?

The agriculture products are wanted, but at a lower price that is not reflected in the retail price.
What this effectively means is that the productivity in the urban areas has declined, requiring a greater share of the “primary wealth” produced by the agriculture sector.

The other side of the story is that changing the products you farm is not like changing your car.
It’s more like changing a car factory to a tank factory.
Massive cost with unproven returns.

Quote
“But it's not me or people like me sitting in Australian cities that are the major consumers.”

Australian urban are 5 times the foot print of a world urban.
So this means even excluding the exports, Australian urban people have a much bigger impact as a result.
This is aside from the jobs, maybe yours that is created for Australia, meaning a much greater level of wealth in the urban areas.
What about the massive reduction of export earnings, as you listed in your post?
This will cause a massive blow out in the trade deficient.
Are you going to advocate a massive reduction in our living standards to re-balance the books?

Sure cotton returns 7 cents per kilolitre
What does Sydney return for its water as net export earnings? My answer would a negative.

You price is also cleaned and delivered, 24 hours a day.
Cubby station does not get that, as well as uses the water at the source, so cost becomes similar.

You're taling through your arse, MikeM. An exported crop is not exported water because, unlike urban runoff that flows into the sea and is wasted, farm water transpires, it creates life where there was less and when transpired it cycles back to earth as dew or rain, to produce more life.

And all this gonzo water analysis of how many litres of water it takes to produce a kilo of grain etc also misses the point. If the rain falls on a bit of national park it will support one possum every 20 hectares and take a whole order of magnitude more water to produce a kilo of possum food. But your urban planeteers have no problems with that sort of waste. We actually need both and what I find is that most possums would prefer to eat the stuff on my farm rather than the meager pickings served up in the national park.

And what about suburbia? 700 litres a day and what do we get for it? About $6 worth of blood and bone, two dozen farts and an ear full of cliche's and half baked opinions. I'll take the kilo of rice any day matey.