The lunchtime rallies were staged in the Murray Darling basin towns of Griffith, Deniliquin, and Leeton as anger mounts over any proposal that includes buybacks.
Coordinated by local councils and backed by the National Farmers Federation, the rallies saw producers join with agricultural workers and local business owners.
At the largest rally in Griffith where the farmers' federation estimates 2000 people gathered, a convoy of tractors and trucks moved through the town.
They carried signs that read "keep farmers farming," and "buybacks destroy regional towns, stop water buybacks."
The protesters are opposed to any changes to the Murray-Darling plan that will see further water buybacks taking water away from agricultural use.
The changes to the plan currently before the senate will see the return of 450 gigalitres of additional water to the environment by December 2027.
"People in this region are furious," Doug Curran, the Griffith mayor says.
"Decisions are being made in Canberra by politicians that haven't even bothered to face our community," Mr Curran told the lunchtime crowd.
Some businesses closed during the rallies held across the three towns.
"We've been through the pain of buybacks already and we thought we were done with it," Mr Curran says.
Organisers say around 600 people turned out in Deniliquin, where cotton and rice are big business.
Dairy farmer Malcolm Holm from Blighty in southern NSW was at the rally and says people are feeling ignored by the environment minister Tanya Plibersek.
"By diminishing the water pool it will impact not only dairy but rice, cotton, and permanent plantings as well," Mr Holm told AAP.
"Minister Plibersek hasn't really visited where the previous buybacks happened, where a lot of that water came from, she's just ignored us."
Ms Plibersek says the Restoring Our Rivers Bill will allow more time, funding and accountability.
But the minister says she will be looking at a range of options including on-farm and off-farm efficiency projects and voluntary water purchases to deliver the 450 gigalitres back to the environment.
"The Restoring Our Rivers Bill will rescue the Murray-Darling Basin Plan by allowing more time, more options, more funding and more accountability," Ms Plibersek says.
"I don't want to see all this water bought – that's why I am extending timeframes to give Basin governments more time to finish their water saving projects."
"It's also why I am open to other non-purchase options," the minister says.
Not all farmers are opposed to the legislation.
The Murray-Darling Conservation Alliance which represents farmers, irrigators, first nations leaders and environmental groups, wants the bill strengthened.
The alliance says the government must ensure that enough water is returned to rivers to offer the Murray-Darling a lifeline in the face of likely droughts.
Bill McClumpha, an irrigator from Red Cliffs in Victoria says he believes most irrigators support the basic elements of the Basin Plan.
Victoria is the only basin state that hasn't signed up to the new plan.
"Rural decline has many causes, but water recovery is not one of them," he says.
"Buybacks are popular with the majority of irrigators who own entitlements, and they are not a factor contributing to irrigator exits."
The alliance presented a petition of 10,000 people across the Basin states urging Ms Plibersek to stand up and protect rivers.
"We strongly support voluntary buybacks as they're the most effective, efficient and economical way to restore real water, physical water, to the river system," Justine Bucknell, a grazier from Macquarie Marshes in NSW says.
12°C