This Drought Is Different

Sydney Morning Herald

Friday October 25, 2002

Between the extremes of drought and flood, farmers exercise careful judgement when and what to plant or when and by how much to reduce or augment stock. Whether farming is just another business, however, with risks like any other commercial enterprises, is an impossible question. It is one on which city and country are bound to be divided.

What the city too often overlooks, however, is that Australian farmers accept to a far greater degree than their overseas counterparts the burden and the risks of responsible management, through good times and bad. Taxpayer support for farmers, in the form of government subsidies of one kind or another, is low by the standards of other countries. In the United States, 35 per cent of farmers' income comes from government subsidies. In the European Union it is 45 per cent. In Australia, government assistance makes up about 4 per cent of farmers' income.

Not only are Australian farmers more efficient than their main competitors overseas, they live and work in what is in many ways a harsher environment. They often live in conditions of remoteness matched only by those in parts of the US and Canada. In hard times such as the present, relative isolation for many farming families makes it doubly difficulty to cope.

These conditions also represents, in many cases, a difference from times past. As more families have moved off the land, local community networks in more remote country areas have weakened. There are fewer people to share difficulties, to give help when it is needed. (That weakening of communities also explains why there is such passion and concern in the bush over the future of Telstra. It has become a symbol of rural Australia's understandable concern about being left behind, with comparatively poor services, not only in telecommunications, but also in health and education.)

Farming families have to take responsibility for managing their farms, in good times and bad. But this drought is different. The NSW Government is providing some drought assistance, but for many families that will not be enough. The concert and appeal this weekend the idea of the singer Lee Kernaghan some months ago, supported by pastoralist Peter Holmes a Court, and now sponsored by the Farmhand Foundation deserves support. It is a good way to show that in the toughest times especially, the city does not forget the country.