The Ministry of Agriculture has granted funding to five new irrigation projects under the Community Irrigation Fund.

Nearly $2m will be spread across the projects – three of which are in Canterbury, one in Marlborough and one in Bay of Plenty – and go towards technical design work.

MAF Director of Natural Resources Mike Jebson says the schemes will bring wider benefits to the communities they serve.

“To put good schemes through from the concept right through to concrete being poured, there’s a lot of work to be done around communities – detailed design, resource consents and water quality issues.

"This fund helps a lot of those community groups driving those processes to do what they need to do in that respect.”

But Labour Agriculture spokesperson Damien O’Connor says the funding appears to have come at the expense of standards for rural drinking water.

“The announcement is a good one, but unfortunately the Government seems to have forgotten about providing safe water for the many, many communities that don’t have it.

"There was $80m plus sitting in a fund for those communities – the Government took that money, and hasn’t given it back out to those communities that need it.”