Water torture: Unravelling the psychological distress of irrigators in Australia

Journal of Rural Studies 62 (2018) 183–194

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Water torture: Unravelling the psychological distress of irrigators in Australia

T

Sarah Ann Wheeler∗, Alec Zuo, Adam Loch Centre for Global Food and Resources, University of Adelaide, Adelaide, SA, 5001, Australia

A R T I C LE I N FO

A B S T R A C T

Keywords: Farm exit Farm stress Mental health Murray–Darling Basin plan Water scarcity

Water institutional and property right reform in the food bowl of Australia, the Murray–Darling Basin (MDB), has generated both benefits and costs for irrigators. Water allocation uncertainty along with the increased risk of recurring drought has been gradually placed back on irrigators to manage, and in the last decade there has been considerable reallocation of water from consumptive to environmental use in the MDB, which has caused much angst within rural communities. In the face of such change this study provides, for the first time, a large-scale profile (n = 1000) of irrigators' mental health in the MDB. Our point estimates suggest some irrigation industries in 2015-16 recorded some of the highest levels of psychological distress nationally; higher than dryland farmers or the Australian population. Financial difficulties were most associated with this distress, but it was intertwined and underpinned by the ongoing threat of water scarcity, which irrigators often incorrectly associate with the implementation of the Basin Plan. Psychological distress varied by industry and location: horticulturists reported the highest levels of distress, followed by broadacre, dairy and livestock. Future national water policy must consider the real impacts of water recovery, and recognize that so-called ‘socially neutral’ water recovery policies can actually cause significant community harm where they hamper farm exit and adaptation to a hotter future. We recommend that future water policy must focus on i) encouraging farmer adaptation (hence supporting water entitlement buy-back and eliminating on-farm irrigation infrastructure subsidies); and ii) removing farm exit barriers.

1. Introduction Water reform in Australia's food bowl, the Murray–Darling Basin (MDB), has generated both benefits and costs for irrigators under institutional and property right reform. Irrigators who owned water entitlements have benefited considerably from the marketization of water (Grafton et al., 2016), with water now a very valuable commodity asset. Nevertheless, for some this has come at a high price, where water management risk has increasingly been put back on irrigators to manage and accommodate. Because of climate change and serous droughts in the MDB over the past two decades, water security has decreased significantly for irrigators. An example of how irrigators have been increasingly tasked with managing water scarcity issues is the difference between how water allocations were determined and announced in the past two decades. For example, in the MDB's largest irrigation district, the Goulburn-Murray Irrigation District in Victoria, prior to 1998 the water authority accepted the risk of variable expected

inflows during the season, and incorporated them into opening allocations—the share of water irrigators would be able to access that year. After 1998, opening allocations incorporated current storage volumes and expected minimum inflows, which had the result of shifting the risk management burden onto irrigators. Irrigator uncertainty increased considerably; with opening higher reliability entitlement1 allocation levels starting at 0% in six out of the last thirteen years. Water allocation announcements are now updated every two weeks from the start of the water season, depending upon inflows, rainfall and storage levels. The uncertainty of opening and final allocations can lead to considerable hardship for those with annual crops in deciding whether to plant a crop for the year, as well as causing stress for those with permanant crops as to whether they will have enough water to keep their crops alive, which correspondingly requires an increased need for irrigators to carefully plan their water management strategies (Wheeler et al., 2014b). Water uncertainty linked to scarcity issues expand the traditional

∗

Corresponding author. E-mail address: [email protected] (S.A. Wheeler). 1 High reliability entitlements provide water allocations of 100% in roughly 95 out of 100 years. Opening allocations of 0% are therefore unusual for high reliability (though not for general security entitlements), and create significant distress for irrigators. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jrurstud.2018.08.006 Received 27 February 2017; Received in revised form 3 August 2018; Accepted 5 August 2018 0743-0167/ © 2018 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

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therefore become a national priority with expected community sustainability benefits. However, future drought uncertainty, increased water risk-adoption by irrigators, and the Basin Plan have raised questions, rightly or wrongly, about the consequences for rural communities given their poorer health status (AIHW, 2016), and potential difficulties in accessing support services. One of the most common concerns raised is that farmers have higher suicide rates than the general population; up to two times higher, though rates vary regionally (Fraser et al., 2005; Judd et al., 2006a, 2006b; Arnautovska et al., 2014). Conversely, of the few studies into farmer mental health that have been conducted, many find no significant differences in mental health between farmers and metropolitan and other rural residents (Stain et al., 2008; Fragar et al., 2010; Brew et al., 2016). Some reasons include the male dominance of farming (the concept of rural farming masculinity), that females tend to self-report higher mental stress, and less unemployment in farming (a key driver of worsening mental health) (Stain et al., 2008; Brew et al., 2016). As Brew et al. (2016) outlined, there is a paucity of analysis in Australia examining farmers' mental health as compared to their rural counterparts, and a need for more refined local understanding of key drivers. Similarly, Philo et al., 2003: (277–278) emphasized that there has been a tendency in the literature to study the ‘urban/rural’ divide in mental health issues, which can ignore the fact that rural places are “cross-cut by complex axes of social difference, just as are urban places, and that some residents will be rendered poorer, dispossessed and excluded in various ways by the uneven power relations traversing the ‘communities’ in question; in which case they are liable to experience greater pressures on their mental health than are many of their neighbours”. This study incorporates the complex axes of social difference by seeking to investigate a specific form of stress on farming; namely irrigator mental health by industry in the MDB, as compared to farmers in general. Farming as a vocation has always had a certain romance associated with it. Farmers have a deep attachment to their land and the lifestyle of farming. However, the fact that most farmers ‘live at work’ means they cannot escape their workplace easily, and in times of distress this can cause problems. They are also traditionally perceived as strong, independent characters. The concept of rural masculinity often dominates in farming, placing a premium on stoicism (hence a reluctance to share problems), and self-reliance. In addition, rural Australia is characterized by low population density; intense social interactions; geographic isolation and conservative attitudes (Pritchard et al., 2012; Kennedy et al., 2014). All these factors play a role in shaping mental health issues, and the capacity to seek help (Judd et al., 2006b). Within farming communities there is also great diversity. Farms range from small, almost subsistence businesses to huge commercial multinational enterprizes; with a variety of operations in-between (Kennedy et al., 2014). Financial problems have been the issue most commonly found associated with farming distress (Staniford et al., 2009; Fraser et al., 2005; Judd et al., 2006b; CRMH, 2005; Edwards et al., 2015: Fennell et al., 2016). Other common stresses include: stigma and social isolation stresses (Staniford et al., 2009; Fraser et al., 2005; Judd et al., 2006b); managing intergenerational issues and succession/retirement (CRMH, 2005; Roy et al., 2013); constant need to make unilateral decisions—often difficult ones with insufficient information under long working hours (Fraser et al., 2005; Judd et al., 2006b; Kennedy et al., 2014); and external regulation requirements (Staniford et al., 2009). Finally, farmers struggle with external uncertainties. Weather, the performance of global markets, commodity-dumping by international competitors, and the lack of input into marketing all contribute to farmer perceptions that they are at the mercy of external forces (Staniford et al., 2009; Fraser et al., 2005). In their survey of 309 South Australian mainly dryland farmers in 2008 (a year of drought), Fennell et al. (2016) found that drought (and lack of rain) was named as the most common farming stress. As already mentioned, in the MDB, water

agricultural causes of worry for Australian irrigators. Farmers in general in Australia face open markets, declining terms of trade/commodity prices, and relatively little government support or subsidy assistance. Other issues include economies of scale pressures; aggregation of family farms; out-migration of people/services to larger regional centres; competition from mining for agricultural resources; and an ageing farm workforce (Barr, 2009; Sherval and Askew, 2012; Wheeler and Zuo, 2017). Australia is also the driest inhabited continent on earth, and experiences large climate variability. Drought is thus a recurring issue for dryland and irrigated farmers, where both suffered unprecedented water scarcity conditions in the MDB during the Millennium drought (most common timeframe of 2001/02–2009/10). The Millennium drought represented the worst ever recorded drought since European settlement, and led to a large number of irrigators exiting farming. It also had significant impacts on tourism, recreation and the environment. The severity of the drought, and the fact that the environment suffered disproportionately, highlighted the overallocation of water resources, and motivated significant government intervention in the MDB (for a detailed history see Wheeler, 2014). This intervention included the Water Act (2007) which empowered a Basinwide management plan (2012) that set sustainable diversion limits for water─namely a reduction of consumptive (irrigation) surface water diversions by 2,750GL/year, to be returned to environmental use by July 2019 (Taylor et al., 2017). Reductions to consumptive water use have been sought through two major policies: investing over AU $7billion in on-and off-farm irrigation infrastructure to achieve water ‘savings’; and investing over AU$3billion into buying water entitlements2 back from willing irrigators. Recovered water is then held and used by the Commonwealth government to achieve environmental objectives. To date, around 2,000GL/year in long-term average annual yield water entitlements have been recovered, with two-thirds of the recovery achieved through buy-back from willing irrigators, and the remainder from subsidizing irrigation infrastructure. In 2015 a 1,500GL cap on total water entitlement buy-back was established, based on perceptions that buy-back is economically more harmful to rural communities. Recovering water through irrigation infrastructure, on the other hand, is viewed as politically palatable and more socially neutral for rural communities. Despite room within the buy-back cap (and the fact that buy-back was considerably more cost-efficient with less environmental negative impacts),3 in late 2017 there was a recommendation from the Murray-Darling Basin Authority to only recover future environmental water from on- and off-farm irrigation infrastructure to minimize harm to irrigation communities (Grafton and Wheeler, 2018). The Basin Plan, and the water recovery program in particular, have 2 The water savings from investments in irrigation efficiency infrastructure on farms are shared 50/50 between the irrigator and the environment, with irrigators transferring a portion of their water entitlement back to the Commonwealth government in return for money to upgrade irrigation infrastructure. One consequence of this is that reflows from previously inefficient water infrastructure are lost within the system, an environmental externality not currently accounted for in water recovery. Australia's MDB has the most advanced water markets in the world, where both permanent water (water entitlements which are a permanent share of a consumptive pool of water) and temporary water (water allocations which are a seasonal allocation attached to a water entitlement and determined by the entitlement's reliability, water storage levels, rainfall and expected inflows) are commonly traded. As at 2015/16, it was estimated that around half of all irrigators in the southern MDB had conducted at least one entitlement trade, while up to 80% of irrigators had conducted at least one water allocation trade. Hence, the existence of this water market made it possible for the Commonwealth to use market-measures to buyback water (Grafton and Wheeler, 2018). 3 Water recovered via irrigation infrastructure cost 2.5 times more per ML than water recovered via buyback, while irrigation infrastructure upgrades also reduce water return flows (a negative environmental externality on a Basinscale) (Grafton and Wheeler, 2018).

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Anxiety and Depression and Andrews and Slade (2001) to determine four distress K10 categories: low (10–15); moderate (16–21); high (22–29); and very high (30–50). ABS's methodology was followed to allow comparison of results, including comparison with other national health survey data. Comparisons of K10 scores across the Australian population by the ABS (2012) reveal that females score significantly higher than males on severe psychological distress (given that females are more likely to respond “yes strongly” in telephone surveys, and to state they are stressed (WHO, 2001)); and that distress levels slightly peak in middle age and fall in old age. Another major driver of distress in the population includes unemployment (ABS, 2012), again which is not prevalent in our irrigator sample.

allocation uncertainty and scarcity are particular stresses for irrigators. Allocations can be highly uncertain and variable, often starting the season at a zero allocation, and updated fortnightly (Wheeler et al., 2014a). Given that water requirements vary by industry, it follows that water scarcity as a function of drought (Kolstrup et al., 2013; O'Brien et al., 2014) may have different psycho-social impacts by agricultural industry. It is predicted that climate change will only make this situation worse (Wheeler et al., 2013). Climate change—and by association increasing variability in the form of drought and flooding—has been identified as a key source of farming stress (Edwards et al., 2015). Some of the studies that have considered the impact of weather include Edwards et al. (2015), who found that the more severe the drought agricultural impact, the greater the impact on farmer mental health. Peel et al. (2016) found that MDB farmers (dryland and irrigators) with greater intentions to leave farming had worse wellbeing. Others suggest that climate change will exacerbate the stress experienced by rural Australians, worsening mental health and suicide (Berry et al., 2010, 2011; Sherval and Askew, 2012). All humans are subject to stress, but not all manifest psychological distress as a consequence. This study seeks to establish the severity of psychological distress for MDB irrigators by comparing it to similarbased measures of the Australian population and other farmers. This adds to the existing literature because, as far as we can tell, irrigators have never been separated out as a cohort for analysing mental health before. We also investigate whether distress differs by industry or environment, and the main factors of stress named by irrigators. Understanding the different types, and drivers of, distress that irrigators are subject to is useful for informing a more targeted and relevant policy response, and to understand how current water recovery policy may or may not be contributing to the situation. The results may have international policy implications for other jurisdictions where farming and water scarcity issues dominate.

2.2.1. Existing psychological distress data In order to have some comparison between our sample of irrigator stress and the general population, we first collected all available information that was publicly available on existing psychological distress data (using K10 scores) for the Australian population. Information was collected on a national Australian wide sample for the date closest to our year of survey (ABS, 2016), for the general Australian population, MDB population, and for the Australian and MDB farmer population (K10 scores were only available from 2007 to 2013 from the Household, Income and Labour Dynamics Survey Data in Australia (HILDA) in particular year-waves 2007; 2009; 2011; and 2013). Watson and Wooden (2012) provide an overivew of the HILDA survey. While it would be preferable to report and compare K10 scores from the time of the Millennium Drought onwards, only a certain time-period of information was available. The figures for Australian farmers from HILDA include dryland and irrigator farmers (and are weighted more towards dryland rather than irrigation farmers - hence they are not a perfect comparison with our irrigator survey data). 2.2.2. New survey data collection of irrigator psychological distress data A telephone survey was conducted in October–November 2015 (n = 1,0004), with the main focus of examining farming/irrigator stresses and exit issues (note: surveys were conducted only with irrigators, not dryland farmers). As well as asking relevant questions in order to estimate a K10 score, irrigators were asked about if/when they were thinking of selling the farm, and if they had thought of doing so in the past five years. Participants were randomly sampled, with a final response rate of 51% (or 73% including those who agreed to be surveyed but were not rung back because sample size was achieved). Given the high response rate, the large sample size and the fact that the farmer demographics of our sample were very similar to ABS and ABARES irrigator demographics, our survey is strongly representative of the general irrigator population. Irrigators were also asked to identify if their day-to-day farming life was affected by ten specific stressors as originally identified in the literature. These were: financial, time, drought, water availability, community pressure, labour supply/cost, irrigation-electricity costs, commodity price, bank pressure, and family succession. Respondents were asked to: a) rank each stressor from strongly disagree to strongly agree; b) qualitatively discuss/name their single greatest farming stress; and c) qualitatively discuss/name their single greatest worry in relation to their local community. Day-to-day stressors are regarded as important

2. Methods 2.1. Location The southern MDB in Australia is our area of study, which is comprized of irrigation districts in South Australia (SA), New South Wales (NSW) and Victoria (VIC). The MDB contains 65% of Australia's irrigated land, and the southern MDB regions collectively represent a significant proportion of irrigated agriculture. Survey areas included the Murray and Murrumbidgee River regions (NSW) where mostly annual cotton and rice crops are grown; the Goulburn–Murray Irrigation District and Murray River regions (VIC) where mostly dairy and livestock production takes place; and the Riverland (SA) where mostly citrus, wine grapes, fruit and nuts are grown. Irrigators in these districts have historically received water allocations, regulated by government, determined by security/reliability restrictions and other factors such as history of use, environmental conditions and upstream storage. For further information on water trading and water reform history, see Grafton and Wheeler (2018). 2.2. Psychological distress To be able to measure psychological distress in a telephone survey, a widely-used methodology (K10 score) based on ten questions (see Appendix A) developed by Kessler and Mroczek (1994) was adopted. The K10 score is commonly used (e.g. Peel et al., 2016), and is widely regarded as a reliable estimate of psychological distress. Psychological distress is investigated here to try and capture mental health issues linked to anxiety-related problems such as phobias; mood (affective) problems such as depression; and other psychological, emotional and behavioural conditions. It does not measure psychosis. While there is no universally-agreed K10 categorization, the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS, 2009 etc) uses work by the Clinical Research Unit for

4

Irrigators were randomly sampled using computer assisted telephone interviewing methodology by a professional survey organisation from lists of irrigator names (lists were put together from a variety of sources including publicly available information on websites and farm business mailing lists) across the southern MDB after being given ethics approval (number: H-2015226). Given irrigator populations in the three states, the final sample sizes of NSW (419), VIC (372) and SA (209) will result in relative standard errors (RSE) of 4.7%, 5.1% and 6.6% respectively (e.g. indicating low RSEs), for an estimated proportion of 0.5. As an indication, ABS suggests that RSEs > 25% are subject to high sampling error and should be used with caution. 185

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Table 1 Psychological distress (%) across Australia and the MDB by population, farmers, irrigators and industry. Psychological distress level

Aust. Popa 2014–2015

All Aust. nonfarmersb 2007–2013 (n = 52321)

All MDB nonfarmersb 2007–2013 (n = 7250)

All Aust. farmersb 2007–2013 (n = 555)

MDB farmersb 2007–2013 (n = 223)

Sthn MDB irrigatorsc 2015–2016 (n = 998)

Hort. Irrigatorsc 2015–2016 (n = 315)

Low Moderate High Very high

68.0 19.5 8.0 3.7

63.2 21.2 10.7 4.9

65.9 19.5 9.6 5.0

74.9 14.8 8.4 1.9

72.2 19.1 7.7 1.0

58.0 25.5 11.9 4.6

59.7 58.5 20.0 22.6 12.4 14.1 7.9 4.8 Pearson Chi2 statisticd: 20.04**.

Broad-acre Irrigatorsc 2015–2016 (n = 270)

Dairy Irrigatorsc 2015–2016 (n = 187)

Livestock Irrigatorsc 2015–2016 (n = 225)

51.3 33.2 10.7 4.8

62.6 24.0 10.7 2.7

a

National Health Survey 2014/15 (ABS, 2016). Authors' estimates from HILDA (Waves: 2007; 2009; 2011; 2013). The HILDA sample sizes for all Australian and MDB farmers was small, particularly for the high/very high distress levels. Therefore, the associated standard errors estimates were relatively large, resulting in wide confidence intervals (Appendix B). HILDA data was also divided into two time-periods: 2007/2009 (drought) versus 2011/2013 (non-drought). There was no statistically significant differences in distress levels for Australian (or MDB) general population between the two time-periods, nor for Australian (or MDB) farmers. However, for MDB farmers in particular, the point estimates indicated much higher distress levels during 2007 and 2009 than the 2011 and 2013 period. c Authors' results. d Pearson Chi2 tests association between psychological distress levels and industry ∗∗p < 0.05. b

(comparing the HILDA waves of 2007 and 2009 only and ABS estimates) were higher during the Millennium drought, and as expected MDB farmers had higher psychological distress levels in the first two waves (2007, 2009) than the last two (2011, 2013). Our survey allows a more detailed investigation of MDB irrigator psychological distress, focussing on regions that have experienced the greatest water stress (e.g. irrigated regions in the southern MDB – see Wheeler et al., 2014a for more discussion). Table 1 reveals the following irrigator psychological distress levels in 2015-16: low (58.0%), moderate (25.5%), high (11.9%) and very high (4.6%).5 These results suggest that not only are distress levels of irrigators higher than Australian farmers in general, but they are also higher than the general population (at either the latest estimate or during the Millennium drought). However, if we only look at the ‘high’ and ‘very high’ categories, our irrigator survey estimates are not significantly different from those for MDB rural communities during the Millennium drought, as the 95% confidence intervals of the point estimates overlap each other (shown in Appendix B, which takes the sampling error into consideration). But, distress by industry in 2015-16 was significantly higher for two irrigated industries in particular. Overall, horticulturalists had the highest distress (20.3% at high/very high levels), followed by broadacre (18.9% at high/very high levels) and then dairy irrigators. Livestock irrigators' distress levels were the lowest. Table 2 reports the results of socio-economic categorical variables and tests for differences using Pearson Chi2 statistics. Results suggest that irrigator distress levels were significantly associated with gender and education, but not with state location or marital status. Female irrigators report higher distress than men (16% versus 8% at high/very high levels respectively), while in general more educated farmers report lower distress. Fig. 1 depicts the spatial spread of distress across the southern MDB (using ABS, 2011 classifications) and highlights that, although distress levels were not significantly associated with state, they are different within irrigation districts. Areas around the Riverland, Griffith and northern VIC show highest distress. Table 3 reports the results of socio-economic continuous variables, and tests for differences using F-statistics. The results highlight that younger irrigators report higher psychological distress, but expected retirement age is not significantly different among the distress levels. Irrigators under greater distress are also much more likely to state that

influences on psychological distress for irrigators; though they cannot be considered the main or only drivers. NVivo, a qualitative data analysis software, was used to explore themes within the qualitative answers. 2.3. Statistical methods The Pearson Chi2 test (Conover, 1999) was used to examine whether any statistically significant association existed between irrigators' distress levels and their gender, marital status, education attainments, industry, considerations on selling the farm in the last (or next) five years, and how they rated each of the ten specific stressors from daily farming life. Finally, a multivariate test for equal means across groups (Mardia et al., 1979) examined whether irrigators with varying distress have different ages, retirement expectations and financial situations (farm net income, debt and land values). 3. Results 3.1. Quantitative results Table 1 provides psychological distress levels (using K10 scores) of the general Australian and MDB population (for 2014/15 and four waves from 2007 to 2013); all Australian and MDB farmers (predominantly dryland, for 2007–2013); and our southern MDB irrigator sample (total and by industry for 2015/16). Appendix B provides more specific detail about the 95% confidence interval for the point estimates of psychological distress for the relevant populations. Overall, the HILDA data suggests the general population recorded higher distress levels than Australian farmers in general during 2007–2013. This result is unsurprising when it is noted that most farmers answering the HILDA surveys are male, are gainfully employed, and the general population has a higher proportion of unemployed people and females that usually score higher on psychological distresslevel questions (ABS, 2012) (as two of the most common factors associated with mental health distress are being unemployed and female). Psychological distress levels of the general population in MDB and Australia were not statistically different during the time-period of 2007–2013. Their respective confidence intervals overlap as shown in Appendix B. Similarly, from 2007 to 2013 MDB farmers (predominantly dryland) and Australian farmers (predominately dryland) do not have statistically different psychological distress levels. One reason is that the point estimates have relatively wide confidence intervals, with another reason being that the HILDA sample size for MDB and Australian farmers was not large. Notwithstanding, the point estimates suggest psychological distress levels for the general population

5 Given that in the southern MDB, around two thirds of irrigators are in VIC, one quarter in NSW and less than 10% in SA, the figures were estimated using sampling weights (the inverse of the probability that the observation is included).

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Table 2 Psychological distress (%) by socio-economic characteristics (categorical variables). Pearson Chi2 statistic

Psychological distress level

NSW VIC SA Male (n = 863) Female (n = 135) Married/defacto (n = 869) Single (n = 128) Education: below year 10 (n = 166) Education: year 10–12 (n = 470) Education: TAFE and equivalent (n = 185) Education: Bachelor and above (n = 176)

Low (n=584)

Moderate (n=240)

High (n=121)

Very high (n=53)

58.8 57.5 59.8 59.7 51.1 58.7 57.0 58.4 57.9 58.4 60.2

22.5 27.1 21.5 24.1 23.7 24.3 22.7 18.7 27.2 22.7 22.2

12.7 11.6 12.0 11.5 16.3 12.1 12.5 16.3 11.3 9.7 13.1

6.0 3.8 6.7 4.7 8.9 4.9 7.8 6.6 3.6 9.2 4.5

5.6 7.5* 1.9 16.6*

*p < 0.10.

Fig. 1. Southern MDB irrigators in Local Government Areas at high/very high psychological distress levels (%).

Table 4 further explores the relationship between psychological distresses and farm exit. Specifically, irrigators suffering high/very high distress have an increased probability of selling their farm; at an approximately three–fold level. For example, 26.3% of irrigators who had wanted to sell in the last five years suffered from high/very high distress, while the percentage of irrigators suffering from high/very high distress who had not wanted to sell in the last five years was only 8.5%. Table 5 depicts the association between psychological distress and day-to-day farming life stressors. Overall, irrigators in higher distress are more likely to indicate a presence of the ten stressors in their day-today farming life. For example, of the irrigators in the low distress group

they know larger numbers of other farmers with mental health issues. Irrigators who own smaller farms and less water entitlements also express greater distress. Regarding farms' financial variables, significant differences exist for net income and land value across distress levels (Table 3). Irrigators with adverse financial conditions experience higher distress. Although farm debt was not statistically significant using the equal mean test (because of the low debt value for the high distress group), the very high psychological distress group easily had the largest debt. Results reported later in Table 5 confirm the link between financial difficulties and distress.

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Table 3 Psychological distress by means of socio-economic characteristics (continuous variables). Psychological distress levels

Age (years) Expected retirement age Other farmers with mental health issues known (no) Total land area (ha) Total water entitlement (ML) Farm net income ($) Off-farm income % Farm debt ($) Farm land value ($) ∗

p < 0.10;

∗∗

p < 0.05;

∗∗∗

Low

Moderate

High

Very high

59 68 6 923 1076 93,203 25.5 398,712 1,456,002

58 68 18 741 769 77,803 22.4 452,694 1,359,375

57 66 16 637 412 69,348 27.1 392,017 1,196,429

55 66 28 603 542 70,283 23.7 535,577 1,181,604

Low Moderate High Very high Pearson Chi2

Did you think of selling the whole farm in the last five years?

Are you thinking of selling the whole farm in the next five years?

Yes (n=502)

No (n=496)

Yes (n=527)

No (n=468)

50.0 23.7 17.3 9.0 65.7***

67.1 24.4 6.9 1.6

52.2 22.0 16.7 9.1 58.1***

65.8 26.1 7.0 1.1

horticulturists and 72% of dairy irrigators. The proportion of irrigators rating irrigation electricity6 costs as a day-to-day farming stress also varied greatly across industries, with 75% of horticulturists saying it was their second largest day-to-day stressor. It did not rank in the top five stressors for any other industry. Day-to-day farming stressors were further examined to see if there was any association with farm exit. Table 7 suggests that there was not any association with water availability stress and community pressure stress, while the association with family succession was very weak for past farm exit choice; and interestingly non-existent for future farm exit. However, there was a strong and statistically significant association between other day-to-day stressors and farm exit choices, especially in regards to financial pressures, commodity prices, bank pressure and labour supply/costs. For example, 35% of irrigators who thought of selling the whole farm in the last five-years indicated bank pressure as a day-to-day farming stressor, while only 24% of irrigators who were not thinking of selling the farm rated bank pressure as a day-to-day stressor. The survey included a wide range of questions on farming lifestyle, risk preference, technology, climate change, water trade, the Basin Plan, environment etc. Some of these attitudes on various issues were correlated with psychological distress, and Table 8 presents the attitudinal statements for which irrigators with different psychological distress levels have significantly different views. Results suggest that irrigators with higher psychological distress are more likely to have attitudes that are: i) less environmentally-oriented; ii) less supportive of the government or the Basin Plan; iii) less favourable towards water trading; iv) less satisfied with the irrigation infrastructure subsidy program; and v) less optimistic about their region's future. Further implications from these results are discussed in Section 4.

***p < 0.01. Table 5 Association between psychological distress and day-to-day farming stressors (%). Stressors

Financial Drought Water availability Commodity price Time Electricity irrigation costs Labour supply/cost Bank pressure Family succession Community pressure

3.15** 2.05 11.88*** 2.39* 2.58* 4.15** 0.83 1.85 3.08**

p < 0.01.

Table 4 Association between psychological distress and farm exit (%). Psychological distress level

Equal mean test (F-stat)

Pearson Chi2

Psychological distress level Low

Moderate

High

Very high

48.6 61.3 65.9 64.7 50.9 50.9 36.3 21.9 22.6 16.9

65.8 72.1 80.8 77.1 63.8 55.4 45.8 35.0 32.1 30.0

77.7 79.3 80.2 80.2 71.9 70.3 60.3 44.6 33.1 45.5

100 96.2 90.6 86.8 83.0 77.4 67.9 54.7 58.5 50.9

84.9*** 40.4*** 33.3*** 26.7*** 38.7*** 26.0*** 39.7*** 49.1*** 36.4*** 68.7***

***p < 0.01.

3.2. Qualitative results

(n = 584), 48.6% indicated financial stress in day-to-day farming life, while 100% of the very high distress irrigators (n = 53) indicated financial stress. The various stressors were clearly associated with irrigators' psychological distress in differing degrees, but in particular finance, drought, water, commodity prices, time constraints and electricity irrigation costs had the highest associations. Day-to-day farming stressors were further investigated by industry to reveal if significant differences exist. Table 6 suggests that community pressure and family succession stressors are not associated with industry, and time constraints are only very weakly associated—with dairy and horticulture feeling the most time-pressured. Both community and family succession stressors are not highly rated by irrigators in all industries, with less than one-third indicating it caused day-to-day farming stress. For the other eight stressors, significant differences are present across industries. For example, 85% of dairy irrigators and 64% of horticulturists rate water availability as a day-to-day farming stress. Commodity prices were the next largest stressor, named by 81% of

Table 9 provides a summary of the coded respondents' qualitative open-ended responses to i) their single greatest farming stress; and ii) their single greatest worry in relation to their local community. 3.2.1. Greatest farming stress responses Although our overall results do support previous literature findings on the importance of financial stressors, like Fennell et al. (2016), we find that these concerns are underpinned by water availability concerns; viewed by many irrigators as a critical factor to which so many other stressors were connected. For example: There's so many things, but mainly I worry about having enough

6

Increased modernization of irrigation technology (e.g. movement from gravity-fed methods to drip irrigation), plus the use of groundwater over surface-water (e.g. higher pumping costs), increases irrigation electricity costs. Thus, sectors like horticulture with highly-modernized irrigation infrastructure, face greater electricity costs. 188

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Table 6 Day-to-day farming stressors by industry (%).

∗

Stressors

Horticulture (n=315)

Broadacre (n=270)

Dairy (n=187)

Livestock (n=225)

Pearson Chi2

Financial Time Drought Water availability Community pressure Labour supply/cost Electricity irrigation costs Commodity price Bank pressure Family succession

64.7 61.5 59.9 63.7 26.8 52.4 74.8 80.8 36.0 30.9

57.0 58.2 73.0 76.7 25.2 36.3 46.3 65.9 30.0 28.9

62.0 62.0 72.7 84.5 26.2 44.4 50.3 71.7 24.1 22.5

51.6 51.1 69.3 70.2 23.1 37.3 44.9 62.2 25.3 28.0

10.5** 7.2* 14.6*** 28.7*** 1.0 19.4*** 69.3*** 26.4*** 10.9** 4.3

p < 0.10;

∗∗

p < 0.05;

∗∗∗

p < 0.01.

Table 7 Association between day-to-day stressors and farm exit (%). Stressors

Did you think of selling the whole farm in the last 5 years?

Financial Time Drought Water availability Community pressure Labour supply/cost Electricity irrigation costs Commodity price Bank pressure Family succession ∗

p < 0.10,

∗∗

p < 0.05,

∗∗∗

Yes (n=502)

No (n=496)

Pearson Chi2

Yes (n=527)

No (n=468)

Pearson Chi2

65.8 62.4 71.8 74.6 27.2 48.7 60.8 76.5 35.4 30.8

52.3 54.1 64.0 70.4 23.5 37.4 50.4 65.0 23.9 25.4

18.8*** 7.1*** 6.9*** 2.1 1.8 12.9*** 10.8*** 16.1*** 15.7*** 3.7*

63.1 61.6 70.8 73.5 27.1 46.4 60.8 75.2 33.7 29.0

54.8 54.6 64.6 71.6 23.7 39.4 49.7 65.9 25.2 27.1

7.0*** 4.9** 4.4** 0.4 1.5 4.9** 12.4*** 10.4*** 8.7*** 0.4

p < 0.01.

reduced income and health and well-being from living on the land isn't what it should be. And I can't use any of the soil because there's no water [NSW sheep irrigator, 57].

Table 8 Mean attitudinal scores by psychological distress. Attitudinal Statements

Environmenta,∗∗ Governmentb,∗∗ Water tradingc,∗∗ Irrigation infrastructured,∗∗∗ Optimisme,∗∗∗

Are you thinking of selling the whole farm in the next 5 years?

Psychological distress levels Low

Moderate

High

Very high

2.1 2.5 2.6 3.0 3.5

2.0 2.4 2.3 3.1 3.1

2.1 2.3 2.4 3.1 2.7

1.7 2.2 2.3 3.6 2.7

Many of the water-related distress comments indicated structural causes (e.g. allocation announcements) as their basis for farming worry, rather than natural weather events (e.g. drought): I can never figure out what is going to happen with the water. I'm thinking about having to change entire farming production to deal better with the unpredictability of water supply [NSW beef irrigator, 63]. When linked to low commodity prices and other financial concerns, perceived changes to how water is now managed and prioritized toward other uses featured strongly in the responses:

**p < 0.05. ***p < 0.01 for Krusal-Wallis equality of populations rank test. a Environment includes the mean score for the statements: We would be willing to have our seasonal allocations reduced to ensure sufficient water for the environment; Most irrigators think increasing environmental water flows is a good thing; It is essential to make allocations to the environment otherwise irrigation will not be long-term sustainable. b Government includes the mean score for the statements: The MDBA is serious about helping our community to solve our own environmental flow problems; I believe the Basin Plan should be suspended (reverse coded). c Water trading includes: I believe water trading has been a good thing for farming. d Irrigation infrastructure includes the mean score for the statements: Irrigation infrastructure money has been wasteful and inefficient; I would rather irrigation infrastructure money was spent instead on rural health and education services. e Optimism includes: Generally I feel optimistic about my future in this region.

Water is the biggest trouble for me. We can have hungry cows and it costs us money to feed them, yet the government puts loads of water out to sea or the environment rather than give it to us. We have no certainty on water and pricing any more. The whole original point of dams and rivers was for farmers, but the rivers are over-flowing and sometimes I'm still paying a high price for my water. It makes no sense [VIC mixed-farmer, 63]. The recent increased prices of temporary water was also commonly mentioned. Typically, low commodity returns that did not justify the cost of water to produce, and financial pressures from increasing farm input costs or rising debt, were listed as drivers of farming psychological distress: For us it's bank debt and low commodity prices. The production costs are going up, and the income per commodity is going down. We cannot function without water, but it is too expensive to buy. This is an unsustainable situation for us [SA grape grower, 56].

water [VIC dairy irrigator, age 41]. The availability of water for irrigation was also viewed as having changed over the last few years, with flow-on impacts to farm profitability/future viability and a changing rural landscape:

However, while the high price of water were often reported as

Not being able to irrigate the way we used to before all of this, the 189

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Table 9 Overview of qualitative responses1 to farming and community stresses (%). Greatest farming stress

Greatest community worry

Water prices/future water supply/drought Farming in general/life on the land Commodity prices Finances in general (input prices/income) Long work-hours/staff issues Weather uncertainty (incl. climate change) Government policy/rules/Basin Plan Getting older/failing health/succession

26.0 12.0 11.9 11.5 9.1 8.6 8.0 5.2

No farming stress at present Total

7.7 100

Reduced future water access/availability Population/farmer number decreases Other issues2 (no theme identified) Future community financial viability Community support-service reductions Unemployment Government interference/Basin Plan Crime/undesirables/low standards/drugs Mental/physical health issues No community stress at present Total

20.4 19.2 12.6 9.3 7.1 5.6 5.2 4.6 3.1 12.9 100

Note: 1. Based on total respondent numbers of 998. 2. Answers included: concern about local road condition, building application approvals, national park issues, chemical use, Labor/the Greens, closing local stock routes, flood study updates, livestock theft etc.

time in the day to get everything done whilst having my own life [NSW rice irrigator, 85].

causing farming distress, there was less agreement about the cause of those prices. Some viewed it as the fault of government, while others felt that increased corporate farming and international investment into rural land purchasing was driving the issue:

3.2.2. Greatest worry in relation to community responses Water continued to be clearly and routinely mentioned as the chief stressor driving community pressures in the qualitative responses. Without a reliable and consistent supply of/access to water resources, rural irrigation-dependent communities were viewed as unviable in the future. Once again, numerous reasons for reduced water access were raised including past government buyback, corporate farming impacts on water trade and increasing transfers of consumptive water to environmental uses. Natural variation in supply from extreme weather (flooding or drought) was discussed less often:

The way water is allocated is breaking people. Investors should never be allowed to own water without land; when they do, the investors then control the price of water. The price is then too high, and the farmers cannot recoup that price from what they make from their produce [VIC dairy irrigator, 65]. It is the meddling of the government; buy-back policies leading to the reduced amount of water availability, and hence the increased temporary water price [SA grape/olive producer, 52]. Irrigator identification of external interference as a basis for reduced water availability and, as a consequence, farming distress also factored into the qualitative discussion around water (around 8% of responses). These included things like the Basin Plan, changes to announced allocation arrangements, recent changes in policy focus toward supporting environmental flows over consumptive, and falling state/federal government support for farming as drivers:

Without water our community will not survive. It will die because there is no work and no farming. The place is a desert on so many levels without water; no schools as no families with children, less families as farmers leave the community, no sporting structures … [NSW wine-grape grower, 69]. The link between water resources and community viability, regardless of the underlying cause, was very clear to many irrigators—where scarcity-induced higher water prices meant trade-offs needed to be made in many rural contexts:

The Murray–Darling Basin Authority and the Commonwealth government are sending all the water downstream, and they have done a lot of damage to the environment. The government are allowing overseas companies to use our land and our water for their use and their country's benefit. The farmers are getting neglected by the government, they are not looking after the farmers [NSW dairy irrigator, 54].

Lower water availability puts stress on the community by causing less farms and then people have to pay for temporary water, and that means less money for everything else [NSW vegetable grower, 63]. This led to many irrigators discussing community stress impacts from population decline and reduced future viability, which did not implicitly feature in the original list of stressors. Yet the perceived driver of both these outcomes was the reduced availability of water in rural communities: The lack of security in the irrigation system means the countryside has been gutted and hung out to dry. There are disused dairies everywhere - it gets lonely, business are affected, schools are shrinking, so there's a major population reduction due to the lack of water for dairy farmers [VIC rice producer, 50]. But the problems are not just related to community businesses or services; they can also manifest as problems across the fence where abandoned properties following the sale of water are not bought or worked by another irrigator, leading to land-management concerns and frustration:

Being able to do what we need to without so much red-tape and government interference. The rules keep changing and people plan for one thing, but governments come in and change things and ruin our plans [VIC fruit-tree grower, 70]. But, there were also those who criticized these anti-Basin Plan and government views: In the community we have a minority with a very aggressive voice, and they're not representative of farmers in our view. They're causing mental distress for everyday people. These are vocal individuals in the community who feed people with a lot of information and aggression that isn't wanted [NSW stone-fruit grower, 53]. Finally, more common farming stressors such as long work hours, a lack of skilled and reliable workers, an ageing farmer population and not enough hours in the day were all discussed:

My neighbours have ceased to farm since they've sold their land and water to the corporations. Now I'm surrounded by a desert. This is because the government has allowed the separation of water and

Getting the right staff is a problem. It's a combination of lack of time, a lack of staff and trying to get everything done. There's not enough

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our surveys were conducted in November–December 2015, when the outlook for milk prices was reasonably positive. This situation reversed in 2016 when milk companies revized their contracts, slashing farmgate prices. Across the southern MDB dairy farmers were the industry most heavily in debt in our data in 2015/16, which reflects how vulnerable they would have been to commodity price-cuts in April 2016. Given that our results predict that finance, debt and commodity prices are strongly associated with stress, it is likely that if the survey was run again, higher irrigator psychological distress would be found—driven mainly by the dairy industry—potentially mirroring the distress levels of horticultural irrigators reported herein. The stress levels in horticulture reflect the grape crisis in the Riverland, where low commodity prices have resulted in hundreds of Australia's oldest grape growers pulling up their vines and scaling production back post 2010. Within that context, input costs have also increased; hence although horticultural irrigators were most stressed about commodity prices, their second largest concern was electricity prices. This brings an additional issue into focus in regard to the current policy of modernizing irrigation infrastructure, with AU$3.5 billion currently spent and over AU$4 billion still allocated for future expenditure (Grafton and Wheeler, 2018). As more irrigators modernize their irrigation infrastructure toward closed and electricity-dependent systems (given significant government grants to help them do so), this potentially places them at risk of distress caused by higher electricity costs (Adamson and Loch, 2018). The other issue is that the infrastructure subsidisation policy decreases capital costs and increases incentives to convert to more permanent cropping (Adamson et al., 2017), and, as a result, significantly increases the likelihood of these irrigators experiencing severe water scarcity in the next drought and losing years of investment. Indeed, there has been considerable growth in permanent cropping across the Basin in the past decade (SunRISE, 2015), driven partly by changed capital costs of irrigation on-farm infrastructure. Another important finding, similar to the Peel et al. (2016) result for MDB farmers in 2013, was that irrigators suffering high/very high psychological distress are associated with a three-fold increase in the probability of farm exit. While the statistically-significant association is likely to be due to a bi-directional causality between psychological distress and selling the farm, the causal direction from psychological distress to farm selling is relatively strong. This argument is validated by the result that thinking about selling the farm is strongly associated with financial pressures, commodity prices, bank pressure and labour supply/costs; which are major contributors to psychological distress. Using ABAREs irrigator survey data from 2006-2013, Wheeler and Zuo (2017) found that MDB irrigators who were struggling financially were the ones more likely to be thinking of exiting the farm during times of drought. Overall though, there are many bi-directional spill-overs between psychological distress and other influences that make it difficult to identify causality. Nevertheless, bearing in mind this causality issue, a final point of interest is our analysis of irrigator attitudes. As would be expected, there was a positive and significant relationship between irrigators' feeling optimistic about their future in the region and having less psychological distress. However, as may or may not be expected, irrigators who have more positive attitudes towards: i) the environment; ii) government/Basin Plan; iii) water trading; v) the government's irrigation infrastructure investment program; and vi) their future had less psychological distress. Conversely, irrigators who recorded high levels of psychological distress were much more likely to strongly agree that irrigation infrastructure investment had been wasteful, and should have been spent on rural health and/or education services instead. What these results show is that the most-distressed irrigators are the ones most upset with government and the Basin Plan. Often it is the Basin Plan that is blamed as the source of their distress; but as this paper has pointed out, irrigators have a multitude of stressors associated with their day-to-day farming lives, many of which have been

land titles, and due to being surrounded by dead farms I now have feral animal problems, disease problems … [NSW grape grower, 59]. Government again often comes under fire as the cause of these community outcomes, and the lack of water is seen as their fault rather than the consequence of any natural variation or change in supply: It's like a government-induced drought in our area. Our region is underpinned by agriculture, and we are very much at risk of losing it because of availability of water due to the MDB Plan [VIC dairy irrigator, 63]. The Basin Plan is perceived by many farmers as the principle cause of community distress, particularly where water is concerned. It often seems as if the Basin Plan is used as the focal point of blame for the current distress and problems in rural areas. Yet in many cases there seems to be confusion among irrigators as to how the Basin Plan actually impacts them, and that much of the structural adjustment in the past has been voluntary selling of water to the government, for example: Because of the way the government has closed down the water to the farms, the people are leaving the towns and everything is closing down. There are vacant farms, and farms being purchased by neighbours, and the whole social infrastructure suffers such as schools and sporting clubs [VIC sheep/dairy, 66]. This should not be surprising, given the complexities associated with the Basin Plan and its implementation. Yet it highlights an ongoing communication problem for the Murray-Darling Basin Authority and the wider Commonwealth government, and the need to disentangle long-term impacts (such as climate change, urbanisation, terms of trade, and commodity price changes) on rural communities from the Basin Plan. Another interesting finding was the issue of perceived falling standards within rural communities: If they are paying low prices for the fruit, the community won't get work. That's because if the farmers don't have money people won't have jobs [SA wine-grape grower, 65]. I feel like I am losing my community because we have lost so much water and all the farms are going empty. There's cheaper houses and less schools, and welfare people move in and they don't participate in our local community. That has led to a lot of unemployment and drugs (ice) within the younger community [VIC dairy irrigator, 61]. Finally, on average approximately 10% of irrigators reported that they did not have any particular farming and/or community stress that they wanted to highlight. Many stated that they simply did not have any stress, or that the issue was not relevant to them. 4. Discussion While the poorer health status of rural residents and their higher suicide rates have been noted for some time, it is not clear whether living in a rural setting causes these poorer outcomes, or is merely the setting in which these outcomes are played out. Some suggest that rurality itself is not the issue; there is merely a high concentration of risk factors for suicide in rural areas, notably socio-economic disadvantage, an older population, poorer service availability, higher risk, and more hazardous environment and occupation (Phillips, 2009). Others contend that living in a rural area may not in itself be a risk factor, but in combination with other issues—e.g. relationship breakdown, climate change, drought—it may lead to higher vulnerability (Berry et al., 2011; McKay et al., 2012). Like Edwards et al. (2015) who found agricultural farm financial stress drove poor mental health, we found that financial worry was the most important day-to-day stressor for irrigators, but the results emphasize the integral nature of drought and water availability pressures. Commodity prices feature as the next major day-to-day stressor, especially for horticulturists and dairy irrigators. It is important to note that 191

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for irrigated farming. It is also important to note that increasingly there are some parts of the on-farm irrigation infrastructure programs across the MDB that allow investment in some of these alternative management options, and hence have less negative external impacts than directly funding upgraded modernized irrigation equipment. Second, it is important to recognize that because long-term structural economic adjustment and climate change will continue in rural regions in Australia, then it is highly likely farmers will continue to need to exit. To minimize the stress in this situation, we advocate eliminating policies that i) hinder farm exit; ii) reduce the ability to cope with future drought; and iii) create future lock-in and path dependency problems in irrigation (e.g. namely irrigation infrastructure modernization support). In particular, farm exit policies could include reforming termination fees in irrigation districts (e.g. see ACCC, 2017 for more detail on termination fees in irrigation districts and how it can hamper exit), and supporting further exit packages for irrigators (Zuo et al., 2015). Finally, further research on the specific drivers of irrigators' mental health and their links with key social and economic characteristics across the MDB is also clearly warranted.

around for a long time. In this context, the Basin Plan is a convenient focal point offering an easy target for blame. From a historical perspective, Australian farmers in general have gone from being one of the most-regulated industries to one of the most-deregulated, and this is particularly the case in irrigation. It is also easy to ignore long-term (often gradual) impacts of farming communities, such as climate change, urbanisation and falling commodity prices. Many Australian farmers still hold agrarian ideals and values associated with ‘countrymindedness’, while at the same time operating in an economic and legal environment where this is not necessarily supported. This can provide conflict and stress, and in the case of irrigation, irrigators that are mostdistressed have incorrectly associated the long-term decline of regional communities with government and the Basin Plan. Unfortunately, this perception by irrigators and their communities has been inflamed by poor quality economic analysis (such as those predicting huge job losses in rural communities from water recovery (e.g. RMCG, 2016)), that do not take into account actual irrigator farm and water use behaviour, the difference between farm revenue or farm profit, nor communities' longterm structural decline issues. In contrast, Grafton and Wheeler (2018) provide a review of robust economic evidence of the impact of water recovery. Other problems with irrigation on-farm expenditure subsidies is that modernization has a number of negative environmental externalities (e.g. it reduces reflows to surface and groundwater sources (a negative externality at a Basin-level) (Perry et al., 2017). It can also cause a ‘rebound effect’, where irrigators change crop mix and irrigate more land; hence instead of reducing farm water use, water use increases overall. In terms of the arguments that irrigation infrastructure provides additional jobs and investments within local communities, and has large economic benefits, this is also a furphy, as modelling by Wittwer and Dixon (2013) showed that for each job created from irrigation upgrades in the Basin, money instead spent on education and health services would have created an additional three to four jobs. Given the negative community impacts from high psychological distress, there is a clear need for more appropriate policy intervention. Although discussion on the type of such health policy interventions is beyond the scope of this article (e.g. see the Australian National Centre for Farmer Health for variety of measures being tried), there are a number of insights that are highly relevant for future water policy in the MDB. The issue of first importance is to recognize that the implementation of the Basin Plan has become a focal-point of blame for what is wrong within rural communities—in particular the buy-back of water entitlements—and that water recovery through on-and-off farm irrigation infrastructure is regarded as more ‘socially neutral’ in terms of rural community impacts. Although this study has reinforced that water uncertainty, scarcity and drought are very important influences of irrigator psychological distress, the most common stress is financial pressure (debt, commodity prices, irrigation electricity costs etc.). Financial pressures are most likely never going to diminish, no matter what the focus of national water policy, nor the threat of the next drought. Similarly, governments cannot change (in the short-term at least without wider world commitment), the likelihood of climate change or future droughts. Hence, if the objective is to minimize irrigator psychological distress, the best way forward is to implement policies that encourage adaptation to more volatile climate conditions, and in particular to more frequent extremely dry periods. We argue that irrigation farm adaptation in the context of MDB water reform is best served first and foremost by the buy-back of water entitlements, because the flexible nature of this policy allows for compensated and dignified farm exit—including the ability to spend the proceeds on the farm or in whatever way is seen fit (e.g. reducing debt─which is not possible through irrigation infrastructure subsidies). Other valuable adaptation measures include increasing landholders' water and land management capacity through ecological and other land cropping measures, improving the availability of water market information, and conducting further research on value-adding and market opportunities

5. Conclusion Our results found that MDB irrigators in a number of key irrigation industries in 2015/16 recorded very high levels of psychological distress; higher than other dryland farmers, or the Australian population. Apportioning blame for these levels of distress is always difficult, but it is clear that financial stress is the key—intertwined irrevocably with water uncertainty/scarcity issues. It is also important to note that the Basin Plan cannot change the likelihood of droughts in the future; this is the real factor that determines water scarcity and uncertainty issues for irrigators. We found distress varied significantly by industry, with horticulturalists reporting the highest levels of stress, followed by broadacre, dairy and livestock irrigators. In particular, hundreds of grape growers in the Riverland have had to pull up their vines or dump grapes post 2010 due to low commodity prices and high input costs, and this was what mainly drove their day-to-day farming stress. Other significant factors associated with higher distress include younger age, smaller farms and water ownership, being female, having less education, and being in a poorer financial state (e.g. higher debt, less net farm income, lower land value). These variables allow for an identification of the risk factors for worsening irrigator mental health distress; for example, as experienced post-2016 by the dairy industry under falling milk prices, and increasing debt. The results of this study highlight that the Basin Plan in Australia has been incorrectly blamed for much of MDB rural community distress, and argues that the shift in current water policy away from the buy-back of water entitlements towards socalled more ‘socially neutral’ water recovery methods via subsidized irrigation infrastructure may increase irrigators' psychological distress in the future (through increased vulnerability to drought, farm path dependency and lock-in impacts). We advocate that future policy must focus on increasing and encouraging the adaptation-capacity of all farmers to a hotter future, and remove any barriers to facilitate farm exit and hence minimize psychological distress. Acknowledgements This paper uses unit record data from the Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia (HILDA) Survey. HILDA was initiated and funded by the Department of Social Services and is managed by the Melbourne Institute of Applied Economic and Social Research. The findings and views reported in this paper are those of the authors and should not be attributed to either organisation. We are also grateful for advice received from anonymous reviewers and for funding support from Australian Research Council FT140100773, DP140103946 and DE150100328, and a University of Adelaide interdisciplinary water network grant. 192

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Appendix C. Supplementary data Supplementary data related to this article can be found at https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jrurstud.2018.08.006. Appendix A. K10 questions and farming stressors A.1. For you personally, over the last four weeks about how often did you feel:

Tired for no good reason Nervous So nervous that nothing could calm you down Hopeless Restless or fidgety So restless that you couldn't sit still Depressed That everything was an effort So sad that nothing could cheer you up Worthless

All of the time

Most of the time

Some of the time

A little of the time

None of the time

❒ ❒ ❒ ❒ ❒ ❒ ❒ ❒ ❒ ❒

❒ ❒ ❒ ❒ ❒ ❒ ❒ ❒ ❒ ❒

❒ ❒ ❒ ❒ ❒ ❒ ❒ ❒ ❒ ❒

❒ ❒ ❒ ❒ ❒ ❒ ❒ ❒ ❒ ❒

❒ ❒ ❒ ❒ ❒ ❒ ❒ ❒ ❒ ❒

Appendix B. Confidence intervals for psychological distress estimates Table B1 below details the 95% confidence interval for the point estimates of psychological distress for the relevant populations by source. The two surveys closest in periods of time (ABS national survey and our irrigator survey) illustrates no overlap in three out of the four confidence intervals for the four distress levels, and similarly no overlap in two out of the four confidence intervals between estimates for Australian farmers and our irrigator sample. Hence, we can be confident that irrigator mental health is significantly worse than the general population and not better than the farmer population in general. There is some overlap between the confidence intervals of high/very high psychological distress for the Australian non-farmers (HILDA) and the MDB non-farmers (HILDA) during 2007–2013 and current irrigators' psychological distress level in a non-drought period, suggesting that drought may have a detrimental impact on mental health (as evidenced by Edwards et al., 2015). Therefore, we cannot conclude with definite certainty that southern MDB irrigator mental health in general as at 2015–16 is worse than MDB rural population health in a period of drought, but results for specific irrigated industries such as horticulture and broadacre indicate significant difference. Table B1 Confidence intervals for psychological distress levels by data source. Psychological distress level ABS 2014-15

Low Moderate High Very high

HILDA (2007–2013)

Own survey (2015–2016)

Australian population

All Aust. nonfarmers

All MDB nonfarmers

All Aust. Farmers

MDB farmers Southern MDB irrigators

lower

upper

lower

upper

lower

upper

lower

upper

lower upper lower

upper

67.6 18.8 7.5 3.3

69.5 20.5 8.6 4.2

62.7 20.7 10.3 4.7

63.7 21.7 11.0 5.2

64.6 18.4 8.8 4.5

67.2 20.5 10.4 5.6

70.7 11.8 6.0 1.0

78.7 18.4 11.5 3.5

65.4 14.1 4.7 0.2

61.6 28.9 14.4 6.2

78.1 25.4 12.5 3.8

54.4 22.5 9.7 3.3

Andrews, G., Slade, T., 2001. Interpreting scores on the Kessler psychological distress scale (k10). Aust. N. Z. J. Publ. Health 25, 494–497. Arnautovska, U., McPhedran, S., De Leo, D., 2014. A regional approach to understanding farmer suicide rates in Queensland. Soc. Psychiatr. Psychiatr. Epidemiol. 49, 593–599. Barr, N., 2009. The House on the Hill: the Transformation of Australia's Farming Communities. Land and Water Australia. Halstead Press, Canberra. Berry, H., Bowen, K., Kjellstrom, T., 2010. Climate change and mental health: a causal pathways framework. Int. J. Publ. Health 55, 123–132. Berry, H., Hogan, A., Owen, J., Rickwood, D., Fragar, L., 2011. Climate change and farmers' mental health: risks and Responses. Asia Pac. J. Publ. Health 23, 119s–132s. Brew, B., Inder, K., Allen, J., Thomas, M., Kelly, B., 2016. The health and wellbeing of Australian farmers: a longitudinal cohort study. BMC Publ. Health 16, 988–999. CRMH, 2005. Depression in Farmers and Farming Families, Project Report 2005. Centre for Rural Mental Health. Monash University. Conover, W.J., 1999. Practical Nonparametric Statistics, third ed. Wiley, New York. Edwards, B., Gray, M., Hunter, B., 2015. The impact of drought on mental health in rural and regional Australia. Soc. Indicat. Res. 121, 177–194. Fennell, K., Jarrett, C., Kettler, L., Dollman, J., Turnbull, D., 2016. Watching the bank

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