Rural Financial Counselling Service has busiest six months in many years

The collation of 2019-2020 financial year data, showing 735 clients sought support largely for drought and fire, comes with a message to seek support ahead of Christmas.

AgBiz Assist executive officer Nerida Kerr is worried about the potential of businesses losing another summer's trade.

"There's continual losses ... a lot of businesses depend on Christmas, Easter, and the snow season for their entire year's income," she said.

"Get some support and make decisions early. People can do business differently, or put their businesses into hibernation. There's no one-size-fits-all.

"We're not going to bounce back, we're going to slowly recover.

"Some businesses won't survive; they are telling our small business support people they're going to look at different options."

Ms Kerr and the team based out of Wodonga are providing referrals to mental health support, with the toll of trauma and forced isolation due to COVID-19 taking its toll.

Rural financial counsellor Carl Fraser said the Upper Murray blaze was "an extremely hard, sharp, damaging fire".

"You can tell they're just exhausted," he said.

"Post-fires, it was very much focused on supporting the individual farmer or small business that got burnt, and trying to deal with all the bits of assistance that may have been out there that had terms and conditions ... some people weren't ready to take it in.

"You have a change in the weather, landslides - more devastation - and you chuck into the mix the big unknown of the coronavirus, and suddenly you're having to take a totally different approach.

"As things have unfolded and the season has changed, there's now perhaps a little bit more time to sit down and meet with people.

"The longer-term is difficult to visualise. For some of the more remote communities, they're so dependent on people travelling through."

Nearly 40 per cent of support has gone to farming enterprises comprising sheep, beef and grain, and 35 per cent to dairy, with 192 clients of the 735 seeking help from Towong.

RFCS program manager Chris Howard said following Towong, the most demand had come from the Moira and Campaspe shires.

"Generally speaking, dairy farmers have always made up roughly 50 per cent of our clientele," he said.

"Because of dry seasonal conditions and fires, we've seen for the first time that I can recall, livestock and mixed farming enterprises exceeding dairy.

"Even though seasonal conditions are looking more favourable, we're not there yet when it comes to people's financial positions.

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"We would expect we'll probably see some more long-term business planning needs emerge in the coming 12 months."

The extent of the fall-out from smoke taint is yet to be seen, with the $75,000 primary producer grant program extended this month for the industry, and border restrictions will also take their toll.

Ms Kerr said grant programs were being reassessed and enhanced to reflect the challenges facing the industry.

"There's still amendments coming through and some programs have been extended," she said.

"We've had $10,000 grants and what's coming on stream now is similar programs to the rural financial counselling - it's about mentoring to help people's businesses getting up and going, going digital, there's a whole range of support."