Years ago I was sitting around a kitchen table with a family about eighteen months into the worst drought their district had seen in living memory. Well below average rainfall for two summers. The subsoil moisture was gone. And the conversation I was expecting — the one about survival, about cutting costs, about what they might have to sell — didn't happen. Instead, the father leaned back in his chair, looked at the ceiling, and said, "Alright. How do we come out the other side of this faster than everyone else?"
I've thought about that moment a lot since, especially now. Fertiliser & Diesel prices through the roof. Supply uncertain. The war in Iran has sent input costs in directions that would have seemed impossible three years ago, and a lot of farming families right now are sitting with a version of that kitchen table conversation — except in too many cases, the question being asked is a very different one.
Not "how do we accelerate out the other side?" but "are we done?"
And here's the thing about that question. It isn't a financial question. It's a story.
The drought was real. The fertiliser prices are real. The diesel costs are real. The supply shortages are real. The war driving them is real. I'm not going to sit here and tell you it isn't hard, because it is genuinely, seriously hard. But "we're done," "this is the worst it's ever been for us," "everyone else seems to be holding it together except us" — that's not fact. That's fiction. And it's fiction you're writing yourself, in real time, and then living inside of as if it's true.
The families I've watched come through the hardest seasons — not just survive them but genuinely come through stronger — have one thing in common that has nothing to do with scale, or luck, or some advantage the outsider assumes they must have had. What they have is a ruthless discipline about keeping the story small and the facts big.
They don't catastrophise. They don't reach for the worst interpretation of every piece of news. They don't confuse a bad season with a bad farm, or a bad year with a bad life. When the pressure comes on — and it always comes on — they strip the situation back to what's actually true. Fertiliser is up. We may not be able to source it in the usual volumes. Here is what that actually means for our yield projections. Here is what we can still control. Here is the next decision we need to make.
That's it. Small story. Big facts. Next decision.
It is important to note, this isn't blind optimism. It’s nothing like putting your head in the sand. The family around that kitchen table wasn't pretending the drought wasn't happening. They could see it from every window in the house and in their overdraft. They knew exactly how bad it was. But they also knew — because they'd been through enough seasons to understand it in their bones — that conditions are not a final verdict. It's just the current season, and every season ends.
What I see unseat families isn't the drought, or the input costs, or the interest rates. It's the extra layer they put on top of those things. The story about what those things mean about them, about their decisions, about whether they were foolish to do this at all. That second layer — the interpretation, the panic, the catastrophising — that's where the real damage is done. You can't control fertiliser or diesel prices. You can't control what's happening in the Middle East. But you have absolute dominion over the story you tell yourself about what those things mean.
The families who thrive ask better questions when the pressure comes. Not "why is this happening to us?" but "what can we actually control right now?" Not "how bad is this going to get?" but "how do we position ourselves to accelerate when conditions improve?" Not "who's to blame?" but "who do we need to bring in to help us think clearly?" Those are not the questions of people who are lucky. Those are the questions of people who have made a decision — a quiet, deliberate, unsexy decision — about what they're going to do with the facts in front of them.
So if you're sitting with a difficult set of numbers right now, here's the only first step worth taking. Before you call the banker, before you pull up the spreadsheet, before you ring your neighbour to compare notes on how bad it is — get clear on the facts. Just the facts. Write them down if you need to. What is actually true right now? Not what you're afraid might become true, not what feels true at two in the morning, not the version your anxiety is running. What is actually, verifiably, on-the-ground true?
Start there. The facts are hard enough. Leave the fiction alone.
The season that breaks you is never the drought. It's the story you told yourself while it wasn't raining.
Until next time,
Cheers, Ben
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Disclaimer: The information contained in this article is general in nature and for education purposes only. It is not financial advice. No one should act on the information without appropriate specific advice for your particular circumstances. Ben Law is a former financial advisor but is no longer licensed and cannot and will not give you specific or personal advice in this article. The Financial Bloke Group Pty Ltd accepts no responsibility for any loss or damage occasioned by any person acting or refraining from action as a result of reliance on the information in this article.