Australian Farmers Try to Cope With Recession : Agriculture: Many sheepherders were forced to shoot their stock when wool prices plummeted. Others, unable to keep up with their mortgages, are quitting.

Australia grew and prospered on the strong backs of farmers like John Betts, but these days, life on the land is a discouraging mirror of a country in recession.

Farmers are quitting, unable to pay mortgages or heavy debts on aging equipment. Those who remain have just gleaned a small harvest from parched fields.

Many of the 20,000 sheep ranchers reluctantly followed the government’s advice and shot some of their animals when oversupply drove wool prices down. About 10.5 million sheep were killed in Australia, the world’s leading supplier of wool.

“With all the trouble we’ve been having, killing them off was perhaps the final straw,” Betts said on his 2,000-acre farm an hour north of Canberra, the capital. “No one knows how we’ll be affected when all this comes back to haunt us.”

Peter Yellowless, a psychiatrist who practices in Broken Hill, a small town in western New South Wales state, said the haunting has begun already.

“A (farmer) who has to kill thousands of sheep, sometimes valuable breeding stock, for economic reasons and bulldoze them into the ground suffers untreated psychological stress guaranteed to cause significant-mental health problems,” Yellowless said.

He cited statistics indicating severe psychiatric problems in rural areas. In Broken Hill, the suicide rate is twice the national average, alcoholism is rife and domestic violence destroys many marriages.

Australia’s 140,000 agriculture properties face conditions worse than the Great Depression of the 1930s, said Rick Farley, director of the National Farmers’ Federation, which represents 70% of the 400,000 farm workers.

High interest rates, low wool prices and periodic drought are bad enough individually. Together, sometimes combined with bad management, they are lethal.

“When wool prices fall, often farmers can switch over to something more profitable, like planting a wheat crop,” Farley said. “But when drought means you can’t plant the wheat on time, or transportation charges go up unfairly, then you’ve got a double or triple whammy.”

Farley fears the situation will get worse.

“The banks have foreclosed on properties when they need to, but they know how depressed the market is now and have been holding back,” he said. “If and when we ever recover, and land values increase, they might start taking the farms away again.”

Cow Ridge, the Betts homestead, appears relatively safe. It has been in family hands since the 1840s, when 100-acre plots were given to settlers from Britain. The farm expanded and a dairy was added in the early 1900s.

As John Betts, 56, and his wife, Nan, 52, prepare to take the farm into the next century, however, the future and family connection are uncertain.

To make ends meet, they sell a dairy cow every few weeks. The tractor that should have been replaced a decade ago still chugs along on makeshift repairs.

Their only son, who was expected to carry on, died in a farm accident three years ago. The government told them recently the farm is in the way of a proposed railway line.

“I guess we’ll keep going because we have to,” Betts said. “We almost laugh when we hear the word adversity, because we’ve seen a lot of that.”

Australia’s small domestic market--a population of only 17 million--means farmers export up to 80% of their production. Prices are influenced by events beyond their control.

China and the Soviet Union, normally two of the best wool customers, slashed purchases because of their own economic problems. The Australian Wool Corp. has about 4.7 million bales of unsold wool and the growers’ organization is $2.9 billion in debt.

Betts said many farmers put money into off-farm investments during the good years, when wool and wheat prices were up, sometimes with different results. He offered his neighbors as examples.

One is a “social” farmer who invested wisely in stocks and bonds a decade ago and can live comfortably even if the farm doesn’t produce. The other took a second mortgage to invest in a store, which foundered.

“I know they’re in real trouble,” Nan Betts said. “We heard the gunshots when they had to kill the sheep. We don’t know how much longer they can hang on.”

A Closer Look at Australia’s Farms

Some facts and figures about Australia’s farm industry: * About 400,000 Australians work on farms. Each farming job creates seven others, from support industries to processors and exporters.

* Because of light soil and low rainfall, farms tend to be large. Sizes range from 494 to 4,940 acres in areas of frequent rainfall, up to 148,000 acres in more marginal areas and from 250 to 5,020 square miles in the often-desolate outback region. Some outback spreads are larger than Connecticut.

* Farmers produce 25% to 35% of Australia’s export income. Farm exports are projected at $10.6 billion in the fiscal year ending June 30, 1992.

* Most farmers are involved in wool, beef and grains. Other products are dairy, sugar, cotton, rice, fruit and vegetables.

* Australia is the world’s leading producer and exporter of wool, lamb and mutton, and the No. 1 exporter of beef and veal. Wool production was 2 million tons in the year ending June 30, 1990.

* Japan is the largest customer for wool and mutton, the United States for beef and lamb. About 5.2 million live sheep are sold to the Middle East each year.

* Prices to farmers have fallen about 14% in two years and costs have risen 11%.