However, this year the national forecaster appears to have hit at least one nail on the head.

Executive director Phillip Glyde has recognised that farmers can no longer produce more from less and the increasing land and water pressures, coupled with the reality of climate change and the emissions trading fiasco that proposes to somehow fix it, is too much.

Australian farmers have attempted to keep up with the unrelenting march of costs through productivity gains - it has been one of the few weapons farmers can use against the increasing costs and lower returns that define what is known as "Cochrane’s treadmill".

This year in Canberra, Mr Glyde said the rate of productivity growth on farm had slowed due to the "return of more land and water to the environment".

I would have thought farming land might have been considered to be part of the environment, but we know what he means: the environmental movement.

The recognition that farming can no longer carry the strain of failed seasons, increasing costs, political will and diminishing returns is a landmark statement and the message will hopefully make it from the ABARE building to a few more concrete monoliths in Canberra.

Mr Glyde also observes how consumers' expectations are simply unrealistic.

Producing more from less in a clean and green manner is what Australian farmers have been doing for generations, and doing it without tariff or subsidy.

Australian consumers have been enjoying cheap and clean food for far too long because they have not been paying the true environmental cost of that produce.

Food must become more expensive and the extra value passed back to farmers to allow them to look after their land.

Importing cheap food from low-cost countries has the capacity to increase land degradation and pollution in developing countries, simple exporting the problem.

The kicker to this scenario is that agriculture and the exports it creates is one of the shining lights of our weakening economy and one of the ways Australia is likely to pull itself out of the economic mess currently gripping the world.

Give farmers a chance.