Barnaby Joyce has vowed to keep working to help drought-hit farmers amid criticism his agriculture blueprint is too little, too late.
While the government's agriculture white paper has been broadly welcomed by big farmer lobby groups, some rural residents are not as impressed.
The multi-billion dollar vision of the industry's future includes money for dams, biosecurity, trade, and tax breaks and extended cheap loans for farmers.
But some say hundreds of families have already been forced out of their farms as banks take over and towns empty out.
"It's just too little too late, for many families," Brian Egan, co-founder of Aussie Helpers, a charity which assists drought-hit communities, told ABC radio on Monday.
In the past six months, the charity has visited 450 farming families affected by drought.
"There's a statement in the white paper that says: `We will always stand by farmers in drought'," Mr Egan said.
"But they haven't - they've let people down."
Mr Joyce has promised to keep working to make access to drought concessional loans easier, and cheaper.
On Monday he announced interest rates for those loans will reduce from 3.84 per cent to 3.05 per cent from August.
"That would have to be some of the cheapest money in town," the minister told the National Press Club.
That's in addition to an 11-year extension of the $250 million annual program, and greater assistance through a scheme that helps farmers save money for the bad times.
"If there's something I can do to make it work better, I will," Mr Joyce said, dismissing criticism the white paper was simply a series of dot points.
Labor has given its bipartisanship support for the paper, conceding there are some ideas of merit.
But opposition agriculture spokesman Joel Fitzgibbon says overall it's a disappointment, because it has been driven from the prime minister's department rather than the sector.
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