Living Heritage -Duntroon School - Irrigation in the Duntroon Area

Just look at what water can do!

The future predictions we got from Mr Fenwick, Mr Simpson and Mr Elstone were very helpful and we would like to share them with you.

In the future Mr Simpson thinks that there will be more dairy farms but there will always be sheep and beef, because of the terrain. He also thinks there will be new types of irrigation application techniques invented.
Mr Fenwick thinks that dairying will push ahead with irrigation and crops will do better also, due to the availability of irrigation.
Mr Elstone said that we will become smarter and use irrigation better to help us grow grass and crops, while feeding stock.

Facts

You couldn't have dairy farms in North Otago without irrigation. This is because it would be too dry for cows to produce milk, as there would not be enough: stock drinking water, water to clean out dairy sheds and water to irrigate for growing grass. A lot of grass is essential for milk production - the better the feed the animals are, on the better the milk quality and therefore the more it is worth. Lots of people choose to take irrigation on because North Otago is prone to drought.
Without irrigation you have to count on wet and sunny weather for crops to grow and grass to grow long and green for stock to eat.
Irrigation has been around for about 10,000 years, the first type of irrigation that people used was a bucket of water.