Australia's prime minster, John Howard announced last week that the nation's agricultural heartland of the Murray Darling basin in the east will face a ban on irrigation so that there will be enough water to drink. Australia is currently experiencing the worst drought in the its history, the past 12 months have been the driest in 115 years of record keeping for flows into the inland river system, leaving the government with no alternative other than to turn off the irrigation systems of the 55,000 farmers that supply virtually all of the country's vegetables, stonefruits and citrus, as well as cotton and rice.

The prime minster's warning heralded a dramatic increase in food prices and predictions that a substantial amount of farmers will have to watch their crops fail and would be forced off their land. Howard maintains that if the water supplies to the farmers were not shut off, it would be impossible to guarantee that people in inland towns and cities would have enough water to drink or wash in.

Ben Fargher, head of the National Farmers' Federation said supplies of stonefruits, grapes, avocados and almonds would be seriously affected for years and that once trees died it would take four to five years for the replanted trees to produce fruit.