Australia's farmers crying out for rain

This week, on a visit to give a son and his fiancée in Australia the final push over the betrothal line, I tried to catch up on the wellbeing of the farmers on that southern continent. I began with an agricultural show at Toowoomba, which lies in good farming country 120km west of Queensland's capital, Brisbane.

I've always worked on the basis that Irish farmers are competing against both the ranchers of the world and the peasants of the world.