INTERNATIONAL investors are circling Australia's water market, looking to snap up hundreds of millions of dollars worth of our most precious national resource, with almost no government limit on how much they can buy.

Foreign investors have already bought millions of litres of water rights in our most strategic food-producing areas and are poised to buy more after the massive shake-out tipped to occur when the long-awaited Murray-Darling Basin plan is released.

High and dry ... Riverina rice farmer, Jeremy Morton, with some local children. Mr Morton wants to sell his water entitlements, and close this irrigation channel so he can give up farming. Credit:Quentin Jones

The head of an Australian fund designed to cash in on future water scarcity leaves tomorrow on a trip through Asia, North America and Europe aimed at raising $100 million from investors to buy water in the Murray Darling Basin.

''There is a chronic supply/demand imbalance for Australian water which will result in higher water prices,'' says the website of the Causeway Water Fund, whose managing director Richard Lourey will scour the world for investors.