Closer to home, sentiment in Victoria’s agriculture sector has fallen to a 12-month low as seasonal concerns take their toll on farmers in the north of the state, the latest Rabobank Rural Confidence Survey has found.
Emerging as a ‘state of two halves’, sentiment took a tumble in the northern regions and parts of Gippsland — where drought concerns are heightened — while confidence in the south-west was comparatively strong and is expected to be buoyed further by the good rain in recent weeks.
Despite the drop-off in overall rural confidence, the strength of the state’s farming sector remained virtually unscathed, with the majority of farmers, 92 per cent, rating their farms as viable. And this flowed into ongoing investment in the sector, with 85 per cent intending to maintain or increase their investment.
While confidence in the grains sector fell back this quarter — with slightly more grain growers (26 per cent) expecting conditions to worsen rather than improve (22 per cent) — it was the dairy sector that took the greatest hit to confidence.
Just 15 per cent of the state’s dairy farmers expected conditions to improve, while 48 per cent were expecting conditions to worsen during the coming year due to drought (88 per cent) and rising input costs (22 per cent).
With 99.9 per cent of NSW now in drought — and bushfires heralding an early start to summer — sentiment in the state’s rural sector declined to a 15-month low as more than half of surveyed farmers expect conditions in the agricultural economy to worsen in the next 12 months.
However, while NSW farmer confidence is at the fifth-lowest level in the survey’s 18-year history, it remains at considerably higher levels than at the height of previous significant droughts.
In NSW, confidence in the dairy industry was also down — entirely due to the season.
