Solid rainfall has helped the value of Australia's irrigated agricultural production soar to levels not seen in more than a decade.
NSW irrigators took particular advantage of the extra water allocations, using an additional 781,000 megalitres than in the previous year.
Cotton, vegetables and fruit - the commodities with the highest value in 2011/12 - accounted for more than half of the total Australian $13.5 billion in irrigated production in that year.
The latest figures from the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) show consecutive years of good rainfall saw more water available for agriculture.
Pasture, cereals, cotton, sugar cane and rice were the big winners, with the latter three also recording strong increases in gross value over the previous year.
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Cotton increased by 35 per cent to $2.2 billion. But vegetables and fruit decreased to $2.6 billion and $2.4 billion respectively due to reduced area irrigated for these crops, the ABS
The total volume of water applied for irrigation was 8.2 million megalitres, nearly 25 per cent higher than in the previous year.
The eastern states saw the biggest increases in the area watered. More than half of all the irrigation water was used to grow cotton, pasture for grazing and rice.
Nearly half of all Australia's irrigated crops came from the Murray Darling region, which boosted its output by nearly 15 per cent to $6.7 billion.
