The pick of the solo crop. The great divide between rural and urban Australia may be more than economic and political.
New research suggests that farmers really are different.
Psychiatrist Marilyn Shrapnel, who interviewed 60 farmers in central Queensland, found that they represented a much narrower band of personality types than the rest of the population. Her findings also suggest that farmers' aversion to group situations was reducing the effectiveness of government education programs. Dr Shrapnel, of the Queensland Health Department, said that farmers predominantly displayed only five of the 14 common personality types. Most had a capacity for hard work, perseverance, autonomy, the ability to make decisions and the ability to cope with adversity, and were fully self-contained and comfortable with solitude. But Dr Shrapnel said it was not clear whether the traits had developed in response to the conditions, or whether people with the right type of personality became farmers while those with the wrong kind left the land.