Transcript for Agriculture and irrigation workplace interview

[Speaker: Kishin Thadani]

My name's Kishin Thadani, I work at DEECA. I've been in the Rural Water Projects team for four years now, and overall at the department I've been for 17 years.

Why do you like working in water?

What interests me about working with water is that it's fundamental to life. It's fundamental to our society. Every part of our life, our wellbeing, is connected to water. Basically. It's quite stark to realise that only 3% of the world's water is actually drinkable. And that tells you it's quite stark in the fact that we need to preserve water, we need to manage it appropriately, we need to have people drinking water, but we need to grow things with that as well, and have healthy rivers and waterways as well for biodiversity.

How does your work help communities?

We work primarily with agricultural communities and regional communities, particularly on water security, delivering water security for those townships and those regions. There's dry times, there are times of drought, there are times of floods, there's times of increased demand for water, and we want to make sure that we meet those needs and the water demand needs as well, whilst preserving water for the environment and emerging users such as cultural users as well.

The projects that I oversee and our team oversees, they deliver water security for vulnerable communities that rely on water for farming to feed their cows, to grow their crops to create food that we rely on our food security for local markets and export as well. So, having access to water is really important. And the communities that are underpinned by agriculture as well.

So you might have some farms in a location, but they've got families, they've got communities, and keeping them on their farms is really important for their longevity as well. So, I see water security as fundamental to basically having a thriving agricultural sector, which provides jobs, it provides food, and also doing it in a way which is water efficient.

Why is it important to plan for agriculture?

There's a lot that goes into making decisions and influencing decisions about water shares and allocations. So, from a farmer's perspective, or landholders or water users' perspective, they need to plan ahead for their season in terms of their water demands and make appropriate decisions about ordering water or purchasing water off the market.

Victoria's, you know, water market is one of the most advanced and busy, you know, markets, water markets in, in the world. So, there's a lot of trade that happens within our borders and interstate as well and they need to plan ahead for that.

Our most important responsibility in terms of the agricultural sector and water is getting the most out of every drop of water. Okay? So, agriculture is the largest water user in the state. It contributes $5 billion plus to the economy, and it employs a hell of a lot of flow on jobs as part of growing  food, basically.

So, we need to make the most out of every drop to make it sustainable, but also we need to make the most out of every drop to make agriculture efficient for the farmer, but also for the broader community in terms of minimising the impacts of agriculture on the environment and the health of our waterways as well.

How did you find yourself working in agriculture?

My study path was to do a business degree, and that was, a study path that I was very passionate about. Quite a generalist sort of study path. And interestingly though, I joined the department in the mail room as a starting point, and from there took on many different roles that could advance my career  and build my skills and knowledge base.

I worked in records management. I worked in correspondence. I worked in the office of the Minister for water, and that journey led me to the Water and Catchments Group where I'm at now working in primarily project oversight in the water efficiency space. So, urban  water efficiency, residential water efficiency, and now agricultural water efficiency.

Is water an exciting place to work?

Absolutely. There's a lot of interesting trends happening in the irrigation sector as we speak, and a lot of investment in new technologies in the irrigation sector as well. So, over the last decade or so there's been a lot of investment, you know, well over $2 billion of investment in irrigation modernisation, and the infrastructure and the technology that goes with it.

What I love about my job is working with really cool people, okay? We work with cool people in the industry within our department as well. Everyone's passionate and they've got something to add, and it's a place where you can make a difference. You know, we are at the forefront of change, at the forefront of managing the most critical resource, in my belief, is water.