It is intended to provide $60 million in loans in each state and the Northern Territory over two years to help farmers restructure their debts.
The money will be administered by the states to farms who can show they are viable but under financial stress.
Extra rural financial counsellors will be hired to work with agricultural businesses, while a tax relief deposit scheme will be overhauled, including raising the off-farm income threshold to $100,000.
The assistance package follows a rural finance roundtable held in October last year, convened by Mr Swan, who said he had been concerned to hear how farmers had been hit by the high Australian dollar and depreciating land values.
“These are big issues for our farmers and mean many of our farming businesses find themselves moving towards a negative equity situation,’’ Swan said.
The Western Australia Farmers Federation (WAFarmers) warned farmers that the funding package was unlikely to be available to producers until July, at the earliest. WAFarmers president, Dale Park, said he believed the package would be available from July 1 but the details of exactly how this would be distributed and who would be eligible was yet to be quantified.
The Federal Government’s Farm Finance package initially offered farmers concessional loans of up to $650,000 over five years, then at market interest rates for the 20-year life of the loan to help them restructure debt and invest in productivity.
Victorian Farmers Federation president Peter Tuohey also welcomed the package.
