Telangatuk East's Amity Dunstan is studying the socio-political position of the modern farm at Federation University as part of the Rural Incubator of Social and Economic Research program.

The program is a collaboration between Federation University, the Wimmera Development Association and Regional Development Australia Grampians, which is now in its second of three years.

Mrs Dunstan said her research was looking at what it meant to be a commercial family farmer and the difficulties of working in rural isolated areas.

She said she found that farmers needed to have the right support structures in place to achieve good results.

"Farmers can't farm independently - they are need support and infrastructure," she said.

Mrs Dunstan said in order for farmers to access the data they required, they needed to have quality mobile phone service.

"I also looked at if they had other agencies or organisations in place to enable them to farm effectively."

Mrs Dunstan said she looked at how machinery and technology was being used by farmers.

"I looked at satellite connectivity, and when it was not working, you could see when files couldn't be shared between agronomists and farmers," she said.

"It was little nuances like that that effected overall farm efficiency."

Mrs Dunstan said widespread belief that farmers should "get big, or get out" to remain sustainable into the future was a misconception.

"My research is showing it's more about farm stability and measuring and monitoring through scientific practice," she said.

"For example, you lose the crop once it's harvested, but yield maps gives you the opportunity to talk about it giving it numerical values and records for long-term decision making and comparisons with service providers for other technologies you employ."

Mrs Dunstan said she did a lot of field research as part of her study.

"I looked at how farmers did things and why," she said.

"My methodology was mostly observation based, and I also looked at digital photography.

"I had a lot of casual conversations with people.

"It's a complicated area because it's social science, so it's using a background of statistics to try to explain what is happening on the ground and predict what's going to happen."

Mrs Dunstan said her research was part of an overall program looking at population decline and what was holding the region back.