Trudi Laing, Rural Financial Counselling Service, has dairy history

She says stock market prices, rising interest rates and a hot and dry summer will be the key challenges for farmers this year, and the best first step can be simply "having the conversation".

"If we go back down towards Maffra, the irrigation area, these are things that they're focusing on at the moment and we're trying to assist with the high interest rates," she said.

"With stock prices, we have clients taking sheep to the market, and then turning around and bringing them all back home.

"It's about opening up that discussion to how farmers are feeling."

She said farmers were also struggling to afford insurance premiums.

"The livestock they're selling is not paying for the food on the table, let alone the animals to regrow and their input costs," she said.

Ms Laing first started in banking, and a livestock carrying business, before making the move to dairy farming for 25 years.

"That dairy experience gave me the opportunity to do a little bit study in the background while working and having children," she said.

She said she was involved in discussion groups through the dairy industry and their processor and faced everyday challenges, including seasonal conditions, of being on a dairy farm.

"Being in South Gippsland, it was extremely wet, to extremely, extremely wet," she said.

"To then the extreme of, 'there is no rain'."

Ms Laing exited the dairy industry after 25 years for personal reasons, and has been with RFCS for the past seven years.

"It gave me a great base to open up all those other opportunities that were out there," she said.

RFCS Gippsland executive officer Kylie Holmes said she noticed farmers had built trust with RFCS, which offers crisis counselling, and planning and resilience work.

"It takes a really special mix to make a really good rule financial counsellor, because they have that empathy or knowing what the challenges that farmers are facing," she said.

"RFCS has become one of those trusted sources for farmers because we've been around for such a long time now.

"Trudi, having her dairy experience in that dairy downturn of 2016, she came on board right around that time."

Ms Laing said she faced bank foreclosures and dealt with RFCS in 1994.

"They just hit the nail on the head," she said.

"It was someone to discuss my situation with was really helpful just to discuss along with other things they assisted us.

"They pointed us in the right direction on where to find and seek further assistance to move forward.

"And time went on, not realising that I would actually one day become a rural financial counsellor."

She said RFCS helped them at the time to continue with the dairy farm, and understand new avenues to take during a financial crisis.

Ms Laing said the counselling service helped them understand their priorities to relieve pressure.

"To build that rapport at that very first meeting is paramount to being a really good counsellor, and be able to assist in clients to make a change in their situation," she said.

"Reach out to the Rural Financial Counselling Service, it's about being proactive rather than reactive, sometimes it's just a conversation."

Ms Holmes said Trudi and fellow RFCS counsellors were gearing up for summer, with the potential need to support bushfire clients.

She said during the October bushfires and floods at Briagolong and across Gippsland, they had an emergency support hub in place to help promote support services available to farmers.

"Even though we've had some spikes in demand over the last six to eight months, going into the summer period it's on our minds that there's going to be fires," she said.

RFCS is a federal government initiative, and offers a free service to farmers.

People can find more information about their independent planning and support services here, or by calling 1300 045 747.