Image SYDNEY, Australia — The cattle are more bones than meat, the dirt more dust than soil — and the rain, the glorious rain, just never comes.
In response, state officials in New South Wales announced a new assistance package on Monday worth 500 million Australian dollars, or about $370 million, that will expand existing loan programs and subsidize transportation for shipments of feed and water.
“Farmers are past the point of subsidies and loans.” Image Ambrose Doolan, 53, who has spent decades working the plains near Coonabarabran, said it was now common for farmers to spend tens of thousands of dollars a week or month to feed animals that would normally be grazing free.
Farmers these days wake up and go to sleep thinking of both rain and hay.
“I don’t know anywhere we’re going to find hay within 750 kilometers of us,” said Jess Taylor, 36, a mother of four on a farm in Coonabarabran.
“I do believe there might be some in Western Australia, but that’s a long way away.” The last delivery of hay they bought traveled roughly 900 kilometers.
On his 6th birthday, Ms. Taylor said, her son Harry knew just what to ask for: rain.
“We want to set ourselves up for when it does rain again, so grants for us to clean out our dams or build them bigger would be huge.” Many farmers said the government, at the state and federal levels, should be doing more to ease farmers’ burdens — perhaps by paying for feed and giving it to farmers, rather than expecting them to arrange for it or take out loans they may never be able to repay.
Farmers say the time is now.
“I’m worried all the time,” said David Heinjus, 52, who owns about 1,500 sheep on a farm in Temora, a small town in New South Wales.