Dairying+in+Canterbury

__ Dairy Farming Info __ // Dairy farming problems // // Irrigation: The dry up of our rivers is mainly caused by an increase in water irrigation, peak allocation of water for Canterbury is equal to 180 times the flow of the Avon river, 80% of the water is used for irrigation, 2 big irrigated farms use more water than the whole of Christchurch city. // // Over-Allocation: Ecan has gradually let dairy farmers take more and more water to irrigate their farms, they have allocated so much water in some cases that it doesn’t even exist. This is a big part of why rivers are drying up, so then the farmers had to drill deeper wells and have more powerful pumps that use enormous amounts of electricity to bring the water to the surface. Then the farmers were taking so much water out of the aquifers that the water couldn’t be naturally produced in time. More and more streams were shrinking and drying up all the time. // Our groups issue is extensive dairy farming in Canterbury.