Introduction

This chapter is concerned with the contexts and drivers of community action: it explores how communities come together in the face of externally imposed challenges, and the social processes and resources that shape community action in response to these challenges. Collectively labelled ‘difficult times’, prolonged drought, floods, increasing financial and occupational stress, labour intensification, government regulations and a widening division between rural and urban communities in Australia, have had a serious and detrimental impact on the physical and mental health of farmers and fishers in recent times (Albrecht et al, 2007; Alston and Kent, 2008; Hossain et al, 2008). The responses of five farming and fishing communities in Australia to the challenge of maintaining physical and mental wellbeing while facing various environmental, economic and regulatory pressures on their industries reveal the key role of industry organisations and social processes, including people we term ‘boundary crossers’, in the incubation of community action.

The small rural communities, each with populations of between 1,000 and 5,000 people, were located between 100 and 1,500 kilometres from their nearest large regional service centre. While local health services were used for emergencies and minor ailments, the presence of a service did not necessarily mean that farmers and fishers used it in their health maintenance strategy. Preferred formal and informal services, programmes, social supports and information sources were those initiated and/or maintained through the agency of community social capital and local leadership. Local people who were able to work across the boundary between the farmers or fishers and health services were key drivers of community action for health and wellbeing, and links to health and wellbeing resources outside their communities. Communities which had experienced more severe pressures over longer periods (associated with prolonged drought in particular) tended to have embedded mechanisms to support mental wellbeing into community life, suggesting that external pressures can trigger effective community responses.

Although farmers and fishers have always been vulnerable to the unpredictability of climate and global economic forces, in recent years there has been an accumulation of factors including the global financial crisis, severe climatic and natural disaster events, and long-term drought, that have had particularly severe effects on farmers and fishers in rural Australia.