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During the recent Mental Health Awareness week I listened to several radio interviews with staff from Rural Support, and there is no doubt that the stresses and strains within agriculture can have a profoundly negative impact on people’s state of mind.
Shortly after that I watched television programmes championing our way of life, and it gradually dawned on me that our industry has a real problem with projecting an accurate image of what exactly is happening at the coalface.
On the one hand, ours can be a life of rural idyll. This may involve a financially viable farm business, with two or three generations of one family co-existing in something approaching a perfect social structure.
Everyone working for one another, grandparents providing cheap and skilled child-minding services, and each member of the clan pulling in the same direction.
When an outfit like this is featured on television, (along with the obligatory views of windswept hills and breath-taking sunrises), it has got to be the envy of thousands of less-privileged viewers.
Less fortunate
Far, far away from this image, there are less fortunate individuals, with financial worries, fractured family setups, who may be struggling with all sorts of demons, including stress, anxiety and full-blown depression.
Rather than springing out of bed each morning with a song straight from The Sound of Music soundtrack (I’m thinking: The hills are alive) bursting from their lips, they are more likely to want to pull the covers back over their heads and stay there for the rest of the day.
And therein lies a perplexing issue within farming – ours is an industry of complete contrasts.
In the mood
A few people have told me they read what I write and that I must really love farming.
My response is that I do relish and appreciate the life I chose, but I only write when I’m in the mood.
The truth is that if I wrote something on a wet Monday when things were going badly it would be more of a dirge, with far too much negativity and black thoughts.
Farmers are a proud breed and not enough of us feel able to admit to the occasional times when we feel vulnerable, or anxious, or tired, or lonely, or even a bit frightened by the challenges of the day ahead
I have a sneaking suspicion that my situation isn’t all that unusual in NI farming. Some days I think I may be the luckiest man on the planet: financially viable, in total control of everything I do, a stable family background in support and farming in a scenic part of the world. On days like these we all think we can carry the world on our shoulders.
But there are other days when that same world threatens to overwhelm us. Farmers are a proud breed and not enough of us feel able to admit to the occasional times when we feel vulnerable, or anxious, or tired, or lonely, or even a bit frightened by the challenges of the day ahead. If there’s a farming man or woman out there who can talk about these issues with a friend or neighbour, I’d say they are indeed a lucky person.
It would be lovely to think that someday in the future farmers may be able to voice their true feelings on any subject, and drop that macho, ‘I can do anything’, stance that is so often used as a mask when we meet an acquaintance.
Changes
However, things are not going to alter much in the short term, although there are perhaps one or two small changes that may benefit anyone who is struggling with the daily grind of agricultural life.
For example, social media can be a convenient and useful tool for farming users, but only if it is used correctly, as I think it is used far too often by people (not just farmers) who want others to envy their lives. Therefore, they only post something online when a wonderful event has occurred.
I propose that farmers should pause before uploading a picture of their fantastic life and instead should also sometimes take a photograph of a dead sheep, or a wrecked piece of machinery, or a field of silage that 200 cows have just broken into
This is terrible, and wrong, and it has the same effect on me as going to visit some perfect farm where nothing ever dies or breaks.
Far from making me feel positive and galvanising me into a frenzy of productive thinking, it just makes me feel inadequate and angry.
Therefore, I propose that farmers should pause before uploading a picture of their fantastic life and instead should also sometimes take a photograph of a dead sheep, or a wrecked piece of machinery, or a field of silage that 200 cows have just broken into.
It may not have the same effect on the messenger’s ego, but it would be a real boost for all those mere mortals who are having an equally bad day and would let them know that no farmer gets it right all of the time.
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