Rural Australia could weather recessionary storm

Tuesday, January 20, 2009

Farmers and rural communities could be buffered from the more serious effects of a recession, as long as the weather does the right thing by crops and livestock.

ANZ chief economist Saul Eslake says lower interest rates, and a weaker Australian dollar could work in agriculture's favour.

He says farmers probably won't be affected as badly as other sectors.

"The demand for fuel, the demand for food is likely to continue to grow at a modest pace and some of the imbalances in agricultural commodity markets that we saw in the first half of last year have been taken out by the financial crisis," he says.