Hundreds of farmers with cows, horses and dogs rallied in Melbourne, Adelaide and Brisbane on Wednesday to highlight their plight.
The Melbourne protesters appealed to the city's coffee addiction, chanting "You want a latte? You need a farmer".
Agriculture Minister Barnaby Joyce says the $555 million in concessional loans "will keep the bulls from the door and the dignity in their house", but independent senators Ricky Muir and John Madigan told the Melbourne crowd the support package did not go far enough.
"What I'm concerned (about) is we're replacing a debt with a debt," Senator Muir said.
People brought stock horses and a cow to be part of the rally. Source: AAP
"It's not a handout that you want, it's a fair price for what you produce," he told cheering supporters.
Dairy farmers have been hit since processing giants Murray Goulburn and Fonterra both slashed payments for milk solids from $5.60 a kilogram to between $4.75 and $5 because of a slump in global prices.
For some farmers, this is less than it costs them to produce the milk.
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Unable to make money at current prices, Marshall and Susie Jacobs shut their 140-head farm in Rochester in northern Victoria two weeks ago.
"They're talking about opening at $4.50/kg (in the new season), which for us is $1 under the cost of production," said Mr Jacobs.
"We're only a small operation so we'd lose $60,000 a year in income just off the milk price, let alone any other conditions like water and rain."
Ms Jacobs said they can't afford to reopen the farm unless the unit price for milk rises by about 15 per cent.
Ron Paynter, a farmer at Ellinbank in West Gippsland for more than 20 years, says the package contains a "substantial" amount of money but the details remain sketchy.
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The key, the fourth-generation dairy farmer insists, is how much money people can borrow.
"In the past with concession loans the cap was set at a relatively low level and it just wasn't worth the effort required to apply for them," he told AAP.
But that shouldn't be a problem this time around.
Farmers can apply for up to $1 million or 50 per cent of the existing commercial debt of the business. The loans are over 10 years.
The package includes a $20 million commitment to upgrade the Macalister irrigation system in Gippsland which Mr Joyce says will deliver water back to the region's agriculture.
The government will also establish a commodity milk price index to enable farmers to follow price trends.
Mr Paynter, who supplies Fonterra, believes the long-term prospects for the industry remain "quite sound" even though next year's price outlook isn't great.
"The industry is a cyclical one - it does have ups and downs," he said.
"The majority of people are hunkering down and they're going to weather this."
South Australian farmer Gino Pacitti asked Australian shoppers for their support.
"If consumers can add one or two dairy items to their shopping trolley every week, collectively that will help the dairy industry and it will help profits to flow back to local farming communities," Mr Pacitti told AAP.
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