He runs a one-third breeding and two-third trading cattle operation and regards himself as an open-minded, critical thinker.

"Decision making is not something I suffer inability to do," he said.

Mr Baker's parents bought 'Yirri North' near Glen Innes in 1968 and after growing up on the property and watching his father manage stress levels as well as stock levels through the Eastern Australian drought of the early 80s, Mr Baker thought he had seen just how bad it could get.

"We did the conventional thing in that drought and retained most of our stock," Mr Baker said.

"Like a lot of things in life, the things you learn the hard way or the expensive way stick with you."

So, after Mr Baker took over the family farm in 2008 and the next big dry came in 2018-19 he thought he had it covered.

"We were slowly chipping away, destocking based on rainfall, grass in the paddock and the principle of not feeding," he said.

"We were, historically, what I would've considered heavily destocked by the back end of 2018."

But when conditions deteriorated to a "whole new level" in 2019, Mr Baker realised he hadn't gone far enough and his mental health suffered alongside his business.

"My stress levels were abominable," he said. "That drought is something I don't want to go through again."

Having learned another hard lesson and with a renewed gratitude for his off-farm revenue streams, Mr Baker now lives by a philosophy that is akin to 'making hay when the sun shines'.

"If it's a beautiful day, that's when you fix your leaking roof - not in the middle of a thunderstorm when you'll probably fall off the roof," he said.

He led a drought debrief session with other local graziers in the region centred around the questions; 'what was the best decision, what was the worst decision and what should I have done earlier?'.

While Mr Baker has taken a mob-based approach to drought decision making in the past, he said he'd be more inclined to adopt a data-based approach if the technology was easy to operate and cost effective.

His insights have been gathered as part of a new research project called Decide and Thrive, which aims to assist producers to make informed decisions about selection and culling during drought and inform agtech developers on the industry requirements for stock selection tools.

"It would probably need to be on a hand-held device," he said.

"And as a general rule, you need to have a producer trial it first, who can then tell his colleagues how to use it and how helpful it is," he said.

The Decide and Thrive project, being delivered by the University of New England, CQUniversity and CSIRO through funding from the Australian Government's Future Drought Fund is investigating a range of economic and genetic questions to identify new approaches to balancing the financial, environmental and herd performance measures that need to be considered to ensure a farm business survives drought and recovers quickly post drought.

The research team is collaborating with consultants and software developers with a view to integrating their results into commercial stock ranking products in the future.

The team learned from producers and advisors on how to best to offer support to improving drought management.

The Decide and Thrive team has also developed communications and training tools for extension providers, farm consultants and the Commonwealth-funded Drought Resilience, Adoption and Innovation Hubs to assist in driving adoption by producers of objective stock selection tools and early decision making.