Memo 1 · Energy · Farming
Solar Sizing for MMA: Reaching 1,000 GW
The arithmetic of MMA solar resource.
Read →13.4 million hectares of agrivoltaic productive country. Continental water security. The Murray–Darling drought-proofed for the first time since federation — and the fertiliser, fuel and power that farming runs on made in Australia rather than shipped through a strait.
Australian farming runs on four inputs it does not control: water that depends on local rainfall in a basin whose inflows are declining, fertiliser that is almost entirely imported, diesel that arrives by ship, and electricity priced too high to process what the country grows. In 2026 three of those four failed at once — urea doubled and ran short, diesel passed $2.25 a litre, and canola planting is forecast down 19 per cent as a direct result.
The MMA programme addresses all four with one build. It delivers new water captured from the northern monsoon and gravity-fed from Alice Hub, rather than reallocating an entitlement someone already holds. It makes the fertiliser here, because nitrogen is ammonia and ammonia is made from the gas and power Australia has in abundance. It grows and refines the fuel in the growing districts themselves, so the crop that needs diesel also produces it and the protein meal stays local as stockfeed. And it delivers power under 10c a kilowatt-hour, which is what makes abattoirs, dairies and cold storage competitive again.
Alongside that, 13.4 million hectares of corridor solar country doubles as agrivoltaic production — a second income from the same hectare — and electrified freight carries the output to every major port at lower cost. What follows sets out the current position, the plan against it, and what the farm gate actually gets.
Cons: the existing system and current trajectory. Pros: the integrated MMA corridor programme.
CSIRO and Bureau of Meteorology data document a 10-20% decline in cool-season rainfall across south-eastern Australia. Murray-Darling inflows are on a downward trend. Approximately $22 billion of annual agricultural GDP is exposed to a worsening climate trend.
The Murray-Darling Basin Plan has been the most politically contested water reform in Australian history. Every drought year deepens the conflict between irrigators, environmental flows, and downstream communities.
Every wet season, more than 200,000 GL of high-quality freshwater flows from northern rivers to the ocean while southern farmers face restrictions. The resource sits unused while political conflict over the existing supply intensifies.
Australian raw agricultural produce is increasingly exported as ingredients to be processed and packaged offshore. High electricity costs, expensive refrigeration, and uncompetitive freight make domestic food processing structurally disadvantaged.
Inland populations shrink as services consolidate to coastal capitals. Schools close, hospitals contract, and the agricultural workforce ages. The structural decline of regional Australia is well-documented.
Australia is entirely reliant on overseas urea — about 3.8 million tonnes a year, with roughly 60 per cent of it shipped through the Strait of Hormuz and about two thirds of all nitrogen fertiliser imports coming from the Middle East. Total fertiliser imports were worth $3.63 billion in 2025. Ammonium sulphate is worse: 579,500 tonnes a year, 99 per cent of it from a single country.
Urea went from about US$350 a tonne in December 2025 to roughly US$750, landing near $1,400 a tonne on farm. The wheat needed to pay for a tonne of urea doubled from about two tonnes to four. An AUSVEG survey found 51 per cent of growers with three weeks of fertiliser or less, and 5 per cent with a week. Tasmania was told it had received its last foreseeable delivery, and GrainGrowers warned that some growers would not plant a crop at all.
Diesel passed $2.25 a litre in many regional areas in the same season. Average farm cash costs were forecast to rise toward $756,000 and average broadacre profit to fall about 40 per cent, from $210,000 to $126,000. Gross value of agricultural production is forecast to ease to roughly $95–98 billion in 2026–27, with crop value down $4.5 billion. Australian canola production is forecast down 19 per cent, explicitly because of diesel and fertiliser supply and price.
Australia has world-class solar resource and vast suitable land but no national programme to combine solar generation with agricultural production. Other jurisdictions are advancing; Australia is not.
Gravity-fed aqueduct water from Alice Hub, delivered year-round regardless of local rainfall, secures approximately $22 billion of annual agricultural GDP. Food production capacity grows in step with global demand.
13.4 million hectares along the corridor solar zones double as agrivoltaic country - livestock grazing, horticulture, and protected cropping under and between solar arrays. Climate-marginal land becomes simultaneously productive in food and electricity.
The aqueduct adds 30,000+ GL/year of new continental water supply by capturing what currently flows to the ocean. Australian irrigation expands without depleting any existing user. The political dynamic of zero-sum allocation reform is bypassed entirely.
Ammonia is the molecule behind nitrogen fertiliser and behind the AdBlue urea that heavy trucks need to run legally. It is made from hydrogen and nitrogen — from natural gas today, and from renewable electricity as that capacity is built. A domestic ammonia industry answers a fertiliser problem and a fuel-additive problem with the same plant, and the connected gas network that feeds it is set out in Australia’s Gas Problem.
Canola and hemp become biodiesel and renewable diesel; a standing half-crop rule on canola alone yields 18 to 22 days of national diesel a year. Crushing and biorefining plants built through the growing zones at district and farm scale mean the freight falls, the protein meal stays local as stockfeed, and farm fleets run on fuel made inside the region they work in. The full method set is in Australia’s Fuel Security — Part 2.
Sub-10c/kWh electricity makes abattoirs, dairies, cold storage, and packaging competitive against imported product. More value-add retained onshore, more jobs in regional Australia.
Export agriculture reaches every major port at lower cost on electrified rail. Beef, dairy, grain, fruit, and horticulture move faster and cheaper with lower emissions.
Fertiliser, fuel and AdBlue made in Australia have no flag, no charter, no chokepoint and no war-risk premium. A cargo can be sold to a higher bidder at sea or held for a supplier’s home market; a domestic plant cannot. The mechanism that closed three sea lanes since 2023 is set out in The Proof of the Hormuz Pudding.
Agrivoltaic zones, corridor towns, and intersection cities create sustainable regional populations that support local agriculture, services, and skilled workforce.
Nine benefits, in the order a farmer would rank them. Each is delivered by the same corridor programme; none requires a separate scheme.
Gravity-fed aqueduct water from Alice Hub, delivered year-round rather than drawn from a dam that depends on local rainfall. It is new supply captured from the northern monsoon, not a reallocation from an existing licence, so no irrigator loses an entitlement for another to gain one.
Nitrogen fertiliser is ammonia, and ammonia is made from gas and power — both of which this country has and neither of which it currently turns into urea at scale. A domestic ammonia industry ends the position where two thirds of the nitrogen a crop needs arrives through one strait.
Biodiesel and renewable diesel from canola and hemp, crushed and refined in the growing districts themselves. A standing half-crop rule on canola alone is 18 to 22 days of national diesel a year, and the fleets that work the country run on fuel made inside it.
Agrivoltaic country pays twice: grazing, horticulture and protected cropping under and between the arrays, and a generation lease over the top. Climate-marginal land becomes productive in food and electricity at once, and the electricity income does not depend on the season.
Crushing seed locally leaves about 60 per cent of it behind as high-protein meal — stockfeed for the beef, dairy, pig and poultry operations already in the same districts, instead of protein railed to a port and shipped to Europe with the oil.
Abattoirs, dairies, cold storage and packaging are electricity businesses. Power under 10c a kilowatt-hour is what makes processing Australian produce in Australia competitive again, and value added at home is margin that stays at home.
Electrified rail carries beef, grain, dairy, fruit and horticulture to every major port at lower cost than road haulage and on a fuel that is generated here. Export competitiveness improves without a subsidy and without a tariff.
Transmission, pipeline and rail proposals currently arrive at a property one at a time, each with its own corridor. The multi-service structure consolidates them into a single elevated right of way, lifted overhead, rather than several separate cuts through the paddock.
Crushing plants, biorefineries, processing works and corridor stations put permanent jobs where the crop is grown. Loading seed onto a train is a handful of shifts at a receival site; crushing it, converting it and making fuel from it is a workforce, and a workforce keeps a school open.
Programme-wide ROI summary → · Memo 19 (cost) · Memo 20 (returns) · Memo 21 (counterfactual)