Promoting collective well-being as a means of defying the odds: Drought in the Goulburn Valley, Australia

Abstract

The legacies of drought events include sobering statistics about rural community well-being. Countries such as France, India, Sweden, the United Kingdom, and the United States of America contend with high rates of suicide among farmers (Gregoire, 2002). Australian suicide statistics within the agricultural sector, heading into the drought in 2006, suggested that a male farmer committed suicide once every 4 days (Page & Fragar, 2002). More recent studies suggested that within the state of Victoria, a male farmer committed suicide approximately once every 3 weeks during a drought crisis (Guiney, 2012). These are statistics which, while confronting, often tend to gloss over other impacts of drought at the farm and community level. This article will examine the impact of drought on a farming community in the Goulburn Valley, VIC, Australia along with the state and local governments’ responses. By examining and evaluating a range of reports and documents written at the time about some of the different projects and services that were implemented within the rural communities, such as ‘Strong Women Strong Families,’ the article ascertains how collective well-being was promoted through local government. It also aims to provide insight into how successful or otherwise attempts were to promote and empower resilience and social connectedness in the farming community while it was dealing with one of Australia’s longest droughts on record. An analysis of these documents will provide a better understanding of narratives and assumptions drought workers used to develop service provision for drought affected rural communities and contribute to policy debates about how governments can better collectively manage for drought in the future.