Agriculture is closely linked to the water cycle through irrigation, rainfall use, and water quality impacts. Studies examine how farming influences water availability, groundwater recharge, and ecosystem health.

Management of grasslands / rangelands directly affects local water retention and flow, in turn impacting the small and large water cycles and climatic patterns with water transferred to the atmosphere by evaporation, transpiration or run-off, with each critically related to soil structure and health. Appropriate grazing management of grasslands enhances soil health and structure enabling effective water utilisation to re-establish the small and large water cycles, reversing aridification and the impacts of released water vapour on climate change. 

Healthy soil has much higher water holding capacity than degraded soils and intimately affects the local and global water cycle. Healthy soil is characterised by high organic carbon levels (humus) which act like a “sponge” absorbing rainfall and holding water for extended periods. This in turn assists in mediating both flood (by reduced catchment run-off) and drought (by having more water available over an extended dry period) together with acting as the world’s largest carbon sink.

Water use by ruminants is widely miscalculated and misrepresented. Rainfall (Green Water) falling on non-arable grazing land and producing herbage, subsequently consumed by ruminants, would never be captured for human use. Regenerative grazing practices that enhance water infiltration into soil also enhance water quality in the catchment.