Queensland farmer, Peter Kenny, who chaired a committee looking into the social impacts of drought, told a forum in Canberra yesterday that farmers were hurting because of the "disconnect" between themselves and city people, who did not understand that they were actually producing food, not wasting water, he said.

Mr Kenny released his report to the Government yesterday calling for a national commitment to rural people and communities, which would be a platform for future support from Australians for those areas and people outside the big cities.

Mr Kenny said the mental anguish and pressure felt by farmers trying to defend their livelihoods during the drought was considerable.

"When we went to Griffith we had a number of people there who, for the first time in their lives, had run out of water," Mr Kenny said.

"That was hard enough for them to put up with this because their land was valueless because they had no water.

"They can put up with that to a certain degree.

"But the thing that really hurts them is that wherever they read in the media about wasting water growing rice and wasting water irrigating, that's the thing that really hurts them."

Mr Kenny said these farmers had a job to do – producing food and growing crops for the nation.

"They really believe that when people in the cities hear about us as irrigators using water, that we're branded as water wasters," he said.

"We've got to change that around."

Mr Kenny said the irrigation practices put in place in the past 10 to 15 years in irrigation were unbelievable.

"We don't talk about however many tonnes per acre as we used to. We talk about how much production per litre of water.

"We know that we can't waste this particular resource, but when we get these pressures against us that say we're wasting water it adds to the psyche of the humanity and we just believe we are being trodden on."