the powers that be decided to sacrifice the Darling river for a better looking trade deficit and the crazy idea Australia should be 'the food bowl of asia' despite the country being 90% desert or uninhabitable, low overall cash or job generation for rice and cotton compared to horticulture for the quantity of water used, and the profits in the main going to overseas shareholders. A handful of cotton farms in Queensland provide a hundred or so jobs use as much water as the entire shepparton irrigation district which provides thousands of jobs in horticulture and dairy industry and supports a city of 60,000. Cotton towns in Queensland generally have lower populations now than they did a hundred years ago when they were all sheep properties.
