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.