As farmers prepare to plant this year's winter crop, a group of Southern Queensland growers are trying to create a form of insurance for the input costs that go into producing it.

It would be a farm risk management scheme that would aim to help farmers mitigate risk.

Condamine farmer Rodney Hamilton says that, after successive years of flood and drought, it's becoming extremely difficult for farmers to manage risk and achieve long-term profitability.

"The last three years have been nothing but destructive for incomes for a certain level of agricultural industries, whether it be flood or drought.

"So I think it's come to the fore because it's flowed past farmers on to the service industries. Banks are probably recognising debt problems.

"My little town of Condamine took a long time to recover from the flooding.

"We are looking for a way to mitigate the losses to cover the extreme years of drought and flood so we can fund the next year of inputs and don't get set back so far that it takes us years to recover ”

As a result, Mr Hamilton has spearheaded a push to form a farm risk management scheme.

There are various forms of crop insurance available in Australia.

However, the farm risk management group wants to research the possibility of protecting the money that goes into producing a crop rather than the crop itself.

To do this, the group has turned to Julie Cotter, director of the Australia Centre for Sustainable Business Development at the University of Southern Queensland, to research the possibility of a form of revenue insurance.

"We are going to be looking at exactly what sort of data is needed by insurance companies and matching that information with the needs of farmers to find a way forward for setting up an insurance scheme that is affordable and meets the farmers' needs."

The research has not yet received funding, but John Rochecouste, from the Australian Conservation Farming Association, says there is growing interest around Australia for such a scheme.

Source - ABC