Trevor Smith discusses dealing with droughts, 2008

Transcript of interview

When you get continual droughts, that's drought after drought, it's just the financial side of it that's sort of the killer. Most people have stock, which means they have to make a decision whether or not they carry the stock through the drought. And you don't know quite when the drought's going to finish, so that's a bit of a gamble. But most people tend to try and keep their breeding stock and feed them through, which costs quite a lot of money, which leads to cash-flow problems, especially when you have years and years of drought. The other problem is the psychological problem. I think a lot of people find that pretty hard to cope with because when you get up each day and you look at your stock and you look at the money you're spending on them and they're hungry, it has a big psychological effect on you. Some people can handle it and some can't unfortunately.