Recovery after a flood

Floods cause devastation in many ways, and a unique set of challenges. Pests, diseases, and contamination can easily occur, bringing long-term issues to properties and compromising animal health.

You must immediately report any diagnosed or suspected sightings of animal and plant pests or diseases – it is critical to contain the spread as fast as possible. See our emergency management hotlines for how to report a pest or disease.

Find out how to respond to flood damage with the below resources.

Livestock care

Producers need to prioritise their immediate animal welfare responsibilities after a flood.

Initially, make sure stock have adequate access to food, water, and shelter. You can then check livestock for unusual symptoms of illness.

Animal management

Learn how to help manage livestock after a flood:

• On-farm disposal of animal carcasses – Environmental Protection Authority
• Flystrike after floods – Agriculture Victoria
• Flood recovery resources for landholders – NSW Local Land Services
• Flood information for livestock producers – Meat and Livestock Australia.

For further advice, contact your private vet or PIRSA's Animal Health team.

Crop care

Large volumes of water movement can spread weeds and pests across a wider area. Growers need to know if their crops have been exposed to contaminated floodwaters.

After serious flooding events, or even intense local rainfall that causes short-term flooding, your overall soil health must be re-established. This includes the soil quality, structure, water holding capacity, and nutrient availability to allow for agricultural productivity.

Take these steps to restore flooded fields:

1. Remove debris and sediment.
2. Repair physical damage to soil with tillage, and top dressing with organic fertiliser.
3. Stimulate soil microbial activity with inoculation.
4. Manage erosion by planting cover crops.

Crop management

Learn more:

• Estimating crop yields and losses – Agriculture Victoria
• Mouse monitoring and management tools – MouseAlert
• Manage exotic plant pests.

Soil and land care

Floods can cause significant erosion damage in paddocks, leaving gullies, gutters, sheet-eroded areas, and soil deposits. Debris may have washed up on your property, such as fences, tree branches, and crop stubbles. Flood water can also damage your tracks and dams or sit in pools and lagoons for months.

While the damage can be severe, it is limited to where the flood occurred, so may represent a small proportion of the total property area.

Take time to assess the locations and extent of soil erosion before rushing to repair it – this may be an opportunity to redesign paddock layout and use land for other purposes.

Assess farm damage

When returning to your property, make sure it is safe and check the state of all your assets:

• Recover assets and check hazards – Agriculture Victoria
• Agriculture recovery after flooding and high rainfall – Business QLD.

In reviewing the damage, consider whether it may be more beneficial to leave flooded soil untouched, or fence off damaged areas and plant to perennial species, like:

• trees for shelter and shade
• saltbush for fodder.

Erosion repair

Earthworks can be expensive compared to the productivity returns from restored areas. Take these steps before working on erosion repairs:

1. Wait for areas to dry out, which could be weeks or months.  Focus on managing unaffected areas for cropping and grazing to maintain whole-property productivity.
2. Clean up debris where fences or access tracks need to be rebuilt – watch out for snakes in debris after a summer flood.
3. Re-establish priority fences and consider new plans for your other fences.
4. Restore tracks to enable movement of farm machinery to all necessary areas.

To undertake erosion repairs:

1. Use tillage machinery to level off shallow erosion to 20 cm depth.
2. Fill and level gutters up to 50 cm depth with a road grader.
3. Employ skilled earthmoving operators to stabilise deeper gullies efficiently and effectively.

For more advice and help with soils and landscape after a flood, contact a PIRSA principal regional advisor or your local Landscape Board.