In a first, the New South Wales Department of Primary Industries (DPI) will undertake statewide assessment of surface water available for livestock.
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The DPI is asking farmers to participate in 'Stock Water Survey' on their Farm Tracker app from October to January.
Dr Anthony Clark, DPI's Leader of Climate Applications and Digital Agriculture reflected on the current situation in Goulburn, Braidwood, Yass and Crookwell.
"Generally these regions continue to experience drought conditions, which is being driven by poor agronomic conditions, principally low stored soil moisture and crop/pasture growth."
"Winter rainfall was below average for the region and the drought event has now reached up to 18-24 month in duration.
"There are some isolated areas within the south east that have received well timed rainfall and are currently enjoying better early spring pasture growth and higher dam levels."
The BoM provided a dry spring forecast for NSW in the official climate outlook released on August 29.
The information collected from the survey will help the communities and government understand the scale and regional distribution of the risk of running out of stock water in the coming summer.
The farmers are also being urged to take a photo of their dams and rank it from 'poor' to 'excellent'. This is a useful reference for the farm records and will be saved in the farmer's personal database.
The Farm Tracker app, a tool which can be used by farmers to record seasonal conditions, can be downloaded for free.
It helps farmers to complete a simple crop, pasture or animal survey. The app helps to synchronise reports with a personal database as well as the statewide database.
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