"I suspect the Aussie farmers are dealing with a cycle, if even that"

Haha! and you wonder why Aussies ridicule ignorant uneducated loudmouth Yanks like you (you always demand evidence from others - where is your evidence (you don't even LIVE here!) of such a 'cycle'?) who do not even KNOW where many countries in the world are - like their President...

We Aussies have lived with drought cycles longer than you personally have. And we have the hard experience in South Australia where a botanist said that north of a certain line should ever not be settled because the average rainfall would not support farms - he looked at the plants, but dickhead profiteering politicians 'opened up the land' in a cycle of higher than average rainfall - all the farmers went broke a couple of years later. The derelict stone farmhouses are now part of the tourist itinerary.