The economic value of potential irrigation in Canterbury

The purpose of this report is to provide CDC with the ability to estimate the total benefits for Canterbury and New Zealand from irrigation scenarios under the implementation of the Canterbury Water Strategy. This report describes a series of assumptions which under pin a model for valuing irrigation. The model is built allowing different prices, uptake rates, irrigated area and different land uses of irrigated land, to be defined. The prices valuing land use are informed from both international and national data sources and use the Lincoln Trade and Environment Model (LTEM) to allow the possibility of different international policy market scenarios to be modelled. Using these sources the model assigns values to different land uses under irrigation, and projects price trends until to 2031. The model gives final outputs in total revenue and employment effects from 2014 to 2031. This includes the direct, indirect and induced effects by using the Canterbury Economic Development Model. The results presented here are based on a five year rate of uptake and predicted land uses of irrigated area as 58 per cent dairy, 18 per cent irrigated sheep and beef, 20 per cent arable and 3 per cent high-value arable. Additionally irrigated land in all scenarios is assumed to have been previously utilised for dryland sheep and beef farms