The Stream, November 29: New Water Blueprint for Australia’s Food Bowl

ABC Australia has published the Murray-Darling Basin Authority’s long-awaited draft plan for the ailing river system. The plan proposes to cut water use by 2,750 gigaliters a year, short of the 3,000-4,000 gigaliters initially proposed.

But according to Reuters, even the scaled-back plan looms more political trouble for Australia’s minority government as irrigation cuts have been highly unpopular among farmers in the basin.

A quarter of the world’s farmland is highly degraded, according to the United Nation’s first global assessment of the state of the planet’s land resources. Meanwhile, the report warns that farmers will need to produce 70 percent more food by 2050 to feed the world’s growing population, Associated Press reported.

Anadarko Petroleum Corp. has dramatically raised its estimate for the amount of natural gas contained in a big field it has found off the coast of Mozambique, according to The Wall Street Journal.

Some of Florida’s biggest water districts and water utilities have met several times this year, in near-secrecy, to map out the state’s water future, Orlando Sentinel reported. Talks have centered around the highly coveted Floridan Aquifer.

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