The report, It's About People: changing perspectives on dryness, tells of widespread heartbreak in the bush as the long drought eats into families' incomes, their mental and emotional resilience, and their ability to be part of community life.

But rather than urging more handouts, a panel chaired by Queensland farm leader Peter Kenny, puts a case that policy should focus on helping farmers to prepare themselves for drought, and develop a culture of self-reliance.

"Extreme climate variation is normal in Australia, and so are the production and income fluctuations associated with it," Mr Kenny said at the report's launch yesterday.

"Drought is still often equated with an inability to control the weather, rather than an inability to control a rural business under conditions of climate variation."

In an earlier paper for the drought review, he said, the Bureau of Meteorology and the CSIRO warned of hotter and drier seasons ahead.

"If they are correct, then many farm families, rural businesses and rural communities will need to change how they respond.

"The panel recommends that future policy should move people towards an acceptance that future dryness will occur, that it is not a crisis, and that planning for dryness should be about both farm development and personal and family well-being."

Mr Kenny, who formerly headed Agforce, the Queensland farm lobby group, said each family farm should have a range of plans to cope with the inevitable dry seasons, includingbusiness plans and training in skills needed to earn off-farm income.

"Through these plans, the need for self-reliance will be reinforced … Governments should focus on future policy on facilitating the social well-being of farm families, rural businesses and rural communities, so there is an improved capacity to live with dryness."

That will require federal and state governments to commit resources and incentives to rural communities on a permanent basis, rather than emergency aid in a drought, he said.