Australian farmers keenly hope for rain

Australia is suffering its worst drought in a century. One of the world's main suppliers of wheat watched its exports drop by 46 percent from 2005 to 2006, then by another 24 percent last year. The drought is shutting down production just when the world needs it most.

Darcy Philliips inspects the barley he's preparing to feed to his sheep on his farm near Poochera, on South Australia's Eyre Pinnisula, 640 km (400 miles) west of Adelaide, Australia, Thursday, June 12, 2008. (AP Photo)

Glen Phillips has worked this farmland in the state of South Australia for 34 years. As the earth sifted like dust between his fingers, Phillips squinted into the empty blue sky, which has come to symbolize one of Australia's worst droughts on record.

The wheat farmer says life has never been so tough. Drought has forced more than 10-thousand Australian farmers off the land. Livestock is what has kept his own family farm afloat.

Glen Phillips, an Australian wheat farmer, said to the reporter, "last year's livestock is what carried us through. We had up-towards of 3000 sheep, got a hundred bales of wool, for once we hit good wool prices, so yeah, sheep have been pretty important for the first two droughts. But if we don't get rain here, we won't have a feed, so, and the sheep will have to go as well, reduce right down."

Sheep feed on a line of barley on a dusty field on the Phillips farm near Poochera. (AP Photo)

In two years, Phillips estimates the drought had cost him more than half a million dollars. And this season, he was forced to take out a loan for the first time, in order to cover the costs of planting and feeding his livestock.

With no new income, the family has already paid 11-thousand US dollars for cattle feed this year, and all their other expenses are soaring -- fertilizer is up 30 percent, and weed killer and diesel fuel costs are also skyrocketing. As said by Phillips, "The price of everything is probably going to kill us now. We could probably put up with drought, but you're getting killed in super prices and everything else."

Phillips's family is going to plant regardless. If things didn't turn around this year, Glen's oldest son, Darcy, says he'll have to look for another job.

In the next two weeks, they'll hold their breath and pray for the wheat to germinate. Then it will just be a waiting game to see how many inches of rain will fall ahead of the late November harvest.