Managing water use efficiency on farms by managing the small water cycle -Phil Mulvey

During the 2018-2019 droughts, certain farms west of the Newell Hwy, where the landholdings are larger, received more local thunderstorms than their neighbours with “square clouds”. These farmers practiced conservation agriculture, which included maximising vegetative cover and soil organic matter, a practice which would now be considered regenerative farming. This enhanced the small water cycle to mitigate droughts, improve water use efficiency and helped maintain the small water cycle during bad seasons.

The small water cycle is precipitation from local evapo-transpiration and accounts for between 30% and 60% of rainfall. It typically falls between one and 15 kilometres from where it evaporates and causes fog, light winter rain and summer thunderstorms. Managing the small water cycle increases rainfall, improves infiltration, and stores more water for longer in the soil to benefit plants. Regenerative agriculture, conservation agriculture and biodynamics all follow a system that achieves this and promotes the return of the small water cycle.

Managing vegetative cover and soil organic matter also increases farm resilience. Thus, carbon farming and the return of the small water cycle are interlinked.

For this webinar, we are excited to welcome back Phil Mulvey, founder of Ryzo (formerly Carbon Count), a soil scientist with over 40 years of experience in restoring degraded landscape. Phil believes in empowering and training farmers and landowners to understand their soil and water relationships in the landscape of productive farm systems so they can make informed changes. In addition to Phil's presentation, Richard Campbell will present on the current capability to measure changes in the small water cycle.