SA irrigators ponder action over cuts

South Australian farmers will consider taking legal action to demand the state government compensate them for income lost due to cuts in water allocations from the Murray River.

Ian Zadow, chairman of the SA Murray Irrigators group, which represents about 1,300 mostly citrus, vegetable, grape and dairy farmers, said the group's committee would meet on Tuesday afternoon to consider the issue.

Mr Zadow said he had already spoken to a number of legal advisers who could not see why "we couldn't mount a case".

"I think there's a general belief that when you have an industry that's so important to the country, it's certainly not our fault that we're in this position," he said.

The state government last year reduced the allocations to 60 per cent, but the figure is currently 13 per cent and will rise to 16 per cent in October.

Mr Zadow said the income lost by farmers due to the cuts in allocations could run into hundreds of millions of dollars.

He said figures from 2005 showed the farm-gate value of goods produced by River Murray irrigators in South Australia was nearly $1 billion.

But SA Premier Mike Rann said the river's inflows were the lowest they had been in 1,000 years.

"I don't know how they could possible sue the government," he told ABC radio.

"It's about what water comes down the River Murray."

Mr Zadow is a potato farmer from Caloote, near Mannum, and like many of the state's farmers, his future is uncertain.

"I normally plant potatoes in the first or second week in July, and that hasn't happened this year, and I'm not sure what I'm going to do at this stage," he said.