Farmer Jane Polson lost more than 100 cattle in a historic flood, just one week before she had a baby.
Four years later, her family's dairy operation on the NSW mid-north coast was hit by a more severe flood, which gutted four farmhouses and decimated stock feed.
As the Polsons recovered from those floods in 2021 and 2025, they braced themselves for rising fertiliser and fuel costs when the Strait of Hormuz shut in early 2026.
"You can't plant anything without fertiliser and you can't run a farm without fuel," Ms Polson told AAP.
"It was just, 'Oh God, what next?''
This is a familiar sentiment for farmers around Australia, who are in a constant cycle of adaptation, preparation and recovery in response to a variety of disasters, according to new research.
A national survey of 1017 farmers has found more than 90 per cent have been affected by a natural disaster in the past five years, while 20 per cent experienced four or more.
Among farmers' leading stresses were managing profits, climate and weather events, market uncertainty, an expanding workload and disaster recovery.
Concerns about their own wellbeing and mental health ranked last.
However, nearly a quarter said they were emotionally exhausted and struggled with the demands of farming, according to the survey released on Thursday.
More than 60 per cent of farmers said repeated disasters affected their ability to continue in the sector and 40 per cent were considering quitting.
Australia's oldest dairy co-operative Norco, which commissioned the report, has been on the front line of recent disasters.
Its factory was gutted during the 2022 Lismore floods and many of its members' farms were nearly wiped out by wild weather in northern NSW in 2025.
Chief executive Michael Hampson said the survey results were alarming.
"Nearly half of the farmers in our country have had significant thoughts of leaving the industry - that's a lot of farmers," Mr Hampson said.
"What happens if we haven't got our Aussie family farms that are farming for our country?"
Psychiatrist Sam Harvey, chief scientist at the Black Dog Institute, which backed the findings, said cumulative pressures were beginning to "strip away" farmers' resilience.
International evidence showed early and direct action after a disaster was the best way to protect mental health, backed up with long-term support, Professor Harvey said.
"We know the peak of of mental health needs is often 12 to 24 months after a disaster," he told AAP.
"It's not short-term, it's a long-term thing."
The 2025 flood damage bill for Ms Polson's dairy farm was $1 million.
She was among a group of producers who rallied for government support, which was an added stress.
"You can't recover from a million dollars' damage over and over again," she said.
"We need help building infrastructure and resilience within us."
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