The 2026 Norco National Farmer Wellbeing Report produced in partnership with the Black Dog Institute has highlighted a worsening mental health landscape across Australian agriculture. I don’t know and can’t find how big the sample was but the findings are concerning. Consider that this study was carried out before all the international chaos of the last couple of years, so the situation must be worse now.
We need farmers.
Newspaper article, P.8: https://queenslandfarmertoday.com.au/digital-editions/
From the executive overview of the report:
The findings… suggest sustained pressure across Australian agriculture is intensifying and becoming increasingly structural in nature.
Across almost every major indicator, farmers report rising levels of stress, emotional strain and psychological distress, reinforcing growing concern about the long term impact of overlapping financial, operational and environmental pressures on farming communities nationwide.
More than half of farmers (54%) say they have felt depressed or down in the past two years, while one in three (33%) report worsening mental health over the past 12 months. In the same 12 month period, almost one in four (24%) say they often or always feel anxious or unable to relax a significant increase from the previous report…
Repeated natural disasters, prolonged recovery periods, rising input costs, labour shortages and increasing operational complexity are contributing to growing levels of exhaustion, recovery fatigue and uncertainty across the sector…
Farmers report declining confidence in the future of farming, the rising burden of mental ill health amongst the next generation of farmers, growing concern around succession and workforce sustainability, and increasing frustration that policy settings are failing to reflect the realities of modern agriculture.
At the same time, the findings reinforce the growing connection between farmer wellbeing, regional resilience and Australia s broader food security and sovereign capability.
While the drivers of pressure may differ across industries, regions and generations, the cumulative impact is increasingly shared across Australian agriculture.
The findings raise growing questions about how Australia supports the long term sustainability of farming communities, regional resilience and domestic food production in an increasingly uncertain global environment.
What emerges throughout the report is evidence of a broader structural challenge facing Australian agriculture one where pressures once considered temporary or exceptional are becoming normalised across the sector.
Hope it gets worse!
I hate farmers so goddamn much it’s unreal, about a third of them in my area have put up signs for the PHONies, and the rest for the Nationals. Parasitic chuds exploiting backpackers and other impoverished youths for labour while simultaneously wanting to keep them out of the country. They’re incapable of forming coherent thoughts the same way actual humans do, I hope they all top themselves.I wouldn’t go that far, but I do struggle to have any sympathy for them when their entire living is made off the backs of even more vulnerable people who they exploit as much as they can. Any time there is any noise made about this they will actively campaign against changing things, too. The whole “HeLp oUr aUsSiE fArMeRs” thing they try to push to portray themselves as the sole victims is pretty sickening.
But don’t forget, for example, https://farmersforclimateaction.org.au/ OR https://www.lockthegate.org.au/
Not all farmers are exploiters. There’s a lot of thuggery about, true. I live in a rural area so I see both sides.
as. do I but I’d say 80/20 in the thuggeries favour.
That said they have a shitty deal, France fir example valued farmers and protected them, not so in Australia, we left them to the cutthroat world of capitalism, hollowing out farming and rural / regional areas and are now reaping what we sowed, so to speak.
A lot of the older farmers did not have much access to education, which is different in the younger generation which wants to pursue an agricultural career. That might explain the older ones being as closed off as many are to climate change, etc, (plus rural people everywhere tend to be slower to accept change) Is that also your observation? What has been your experience? I’d be interested to know especially as you are in Tasmania.
I get why you are angry but not all farmers are the same AND without agriculture, Australia is in dire straits.
Ah, I’m sure there’s some less shitty ones out there, I’m just a little salty at my last employer, and also exaggerating for comic effect.
But I really don’t think agriculture should be privately owned and operated.
In this system, the alternative is industrial-scale agriculture which is run by big corporates who generally don’t give a toss what they do to the land. In smaller family farms at least you get a good proportion of people who do care about the soil and protecting native vegetation and wildlife (not enough, but they are there), and are not just profit-driven as it is with Big Ag. As for govt running farms, lol, if they have difficulty enough dealing with politics, imagine govt running thousands of farms with all the vagaries farm managers have to deal with.
Big corporates are typically still privately owned
Yep, that was my point. The only alternative we have is Big Ag, which when small farmers leave, often take over. No one even considers a govt alternative. Frankly, I don’t think our govt would be capable of running such a system.
Repeated natural disasters,
Yet our efforts to avoid the worst effects of climate change are frequently frustrated by science denying
landowners“farmers” who resist electrification and support climate deniers like PHON.increasing frustration that policy settings are failing to reflect the realities of modern agriculture.
One of the realities of modern agriculture is that the climate is changing. Too many
landowners“farmers” are opposed to the policies that do reflect this reality and are there to protect their future.
