Farmers have ranked infrastructure as the most important federal election issue, closely followed by health and water reform, in a new survey being conducted for the Australian Community Media's agricultural mastheads, including The Land and Queensland Country Life.
More than 1000 farmers across Australia have already completed the poll which will run until Sunday. It is being hosted by Chi Squared. To take the poll please click here.
The full results will be published in the ACM agricultural newspapers and on their websites on Thursday May 16, just two days out from polling day.
Respondents have been asked to rate the importance of seven key issues with infrastructure singled out as the most important followed by health, water reform, education, drought support, native vegetation and climate change.
The survey is producing some surprising early results, with just over half of farmers (53pc) saying they believed in climate change while 28pc said they didn't. One in five farmers (19pc) were undecided.
Queenslanders were the biggest climate change skeptics with just 42pc saying they believed in climate change, 40pc saying they didn't believe in climate change and 18pc undecided.
On the issue of water reform, 12pc of national respondents said reform had impacted positively on their businesses while 88pc said it had a negative impact.
In South Australia, respondents were marginally happier on water reform. 16pc reported a positive impact while 84pc said water reform had a negative impact.
In Victoria, respondents were less satisfied with just 9pc saying water reform had been positive and 91pc saying it had a negative impact.
When it comes to political instability, the majority of farmers (65pc) say leadership instability has undermined their confidence in governments of any persuasion to deliver productive reforms.
25pc said the instability hadn't undermined their confidence in governments and 10pc were indifferent.
Full analysis of the final survey results will be released next week.
