[gunnercoops]

[size=100:3qjezcpe]Not sure if this is of interest to anyone, but an article in Mondays Press caught my eye.[/size:3qjezcpe]

[size=100:3qjezcpe]With all the talk of building Dams on the Hurinui, further water extraction from other rivers, and water diversion to help irrigation, this article showed that it is possible for Farmers to help reduce water extraction whilst saving a huge heap of money in the process.[/size:3qjezcpe]

[size=100:3qjezcpe]Basically Fonterra have developed a process that takes the water out of milk on farm.[/size:3qjezcpe]

[size=100:3qjezcpe]It effectively strains the milk, allowing them to keep the milk solids (which is what farmers get paid for) and throw away ( use for irrigation surely).[/size:3qjezcpe]

[size=100:3qjezcpe]This has save the company $800K in diesel as the volume of product being transported has been drastically reduced. …IE 700,000 litres less diesel!![/size:3qjezcpe]

[size=100:3qjezcpe]In their own words “ it makes good business sense”[/size:3qjezcpe]

[size=100:3qjezcpe]

[Miliwolf]

The short answer is no.

The process you have heard about helps to concentrate milk to make it less bulky to transport. Most of New Zealand milk is turned into milk poweder eventually. So no extra water is being removed, it is just getting removed earlier in the journey.

Onto your second point.

For every 1L of milk a cow produces, that cow has to drink 2L of water for starters. That cow also has to eat a significant amount of grass, that grass requires a large amount of irrigation. I do not know the exact figures but to produce 1L of milk might require 10L of water.

So even if the farmer gets all the water back from the milk it does not provide enough water to make a significant impact on irrigation demand.

[Author]

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