The Australian Financial Review reports that insolvency firm PPB estimated last year that $1.5 billion worth of farms were under various degrees of financial stress because of drought, overplanting and debt, and now the fallout from the global financial crisis is hurting farmers.

Debt is harder to obtain, especially as some rural debenture finance groups have themselves gone into receivership or tightly restricted their lending.

Financiers are starting to pull the plug on properties where interest payments can't be met in areas showing signs of distress. But some lenders are finding it difficult to sell the rural properties on their books.

"Rural property was just out there flying along at high prices and then suddenly, no one had any money any more," Ray White's Danny Bukowski said.