Author(s)

E. F. Smith

Abstract

Legislative changes separating water access title from land title potentially have the capacity to redefine the property relationships within Australian farm enterprises. Such changes might also initiate a set of unprecedented changes as to how farm owners organise their agricultural businesses, and manage their farm assets. Landowners now have access to a range of opportunities when managing two of the primary assets that contribute to agricultural production previously unavailable to them when water was associated with land titles. To recognise these new legal relationships, a plethora of administrative and institutional changes have been implemented which impact upon water ownership behaviours and farmers’ attitudes toward water ownership more generally. To better understand the ways in which agricultural producers integrate, negotiate or resist these new governance structures for water alongside other drivers of change, research should be developed that constructs the farm as the unit of analysis; such an approach responds to calls from rural researchers to consider the family farm as an enduring form of social organisation that has the capacity to adapt to the modern world. Keywords: property rights for water, farm adjustment, family farming, Australian water reform.

Keywords

property rights for water, farm adjustment, family farming, Australian water reform.