The town of Nyngan in the rugged heart of New South Wales is no stranger to Australia’s weather extremes. Struck down by floods in 1990, it now sits at the centre of Australia’s worst drought in close to a century.
Nyngan, which lies halfway between Sydney to the east and the far-western mining town of Broken Hill, may have been one of the first communities to be hit by the latest drought seven years ago but large swaths of Australia have followed in its dusty wake.
The NSW Farmers Federation this month declared that 79 per cent of Australia’s most populous state was now officially “in drought”, up from 71 per cent in September. A further 12 per cent is classified as “marginal”.
The drought has taken its toll on rural communities, where farmers face financial ruin as banks and creditors call in their debts, and suicide has become a more telling problem. But its effects are also reverberating nationally as higher prices for food supplied by struggling farmers push inflation higher and, in response, the central bank raises interest rates to what is now an 11-year high.
Higher interest rates have become a central issue in the run-up to a November 24 federal election in Australia. But the feelings of political isolation often expressed by rural communities were reinforced this month when neither John Howard, prime minister, nor the Labor leader Kevin Rudd mentioned drought once during a 90-minute TV debate.
As Ray Donald, a Nyngan farmer, puts it: “Rural Australia features little in this country. We have these large electorates covering 70 per cent of the state but that’s only three seats [in parliament].”
Australia’s drought-affected weaker agricultural output is being felt internationally. Another bad year for Australian wheat exports has contributed to near 30-year low stocks and a corresponding surge in the price of wheat, which last month hit a record of more than $9 a bushel.
Australia’s wheat harvest this year is now forecast to be 12m tonnes, less than half the country’s average of 25m tonnes a year.
Mr Donald, whose wheat and cattle farm Rutherglen on the outskirts of Nyngan was settled by his family more than 100 years ago, says the drought has become a war of attrition and left even Australia’s rugged farmers tired and stressed. He says it is either the worst drought in 100 years, or simply unprecedented.
“Droughts are slow, malignant things,” he says. “They creep up on you and nag you at 3am. There is not much you can do when your water and fodder have run down.”
Mr Donald is luckier than some. He will barely make a profit on his wheat crop this year but he will harvest enough for hay to feed his animals.
Jim McLoughlin, a neighbouring Nyngan farmer, is in a similar position but is concerned about the future. “We have depleted fodder reserves, people are more in debt, stock numbers are down, cereal prices are now so high that it costs us too much to feed our animals and we are still waiting for the rain.”
This year’s bad harvest will also cast a long shadow. “The cash won’t come in now for another year so we will all have to line up and borrow for next year’s crop,” he says.
The poor harvest is particularly hard to bear as farmers are unable to benefit from the record prices being paid for wheat on world markets.
Worse, many Australian farmers gambled this year on a reasonable wheat crop and forward sold their grain, only to see their crops fail. With little or nothing to honour those hedging contracts, they must now make up any shortfall by buying wheat at the prevailing market price.
“I think it will push people over the edge,” says Mr Donald. “The hedges have used up a lot of equity and a lot of people are faced with very difficult decisions.”
John Macdonald, professor of primary healthcare at the University of Western Sydney, says the drought has raised the risk of suicide among Australia’s farmers to a point where they should be classified alongside high-risk groups such as the country’s Aborigines and those who have been incarcerated. “There is no doubt that the severe economic stress that many farmers face because of the drought puts them at much greater risk of suicide,” he said.
Nevertheless, many of the farmers doing it tough on the land remain optimistic. “You have to be,” says Mr Donald. “You put your faith in the rural industry. You rely on the support of your family, and the knowledge you are not alone.”
