Western Daily Press (Saturday)
A smile and a thank you can make a difference
Concerns about farmers’ mental health are growing again. Bridgwater and West Somerset MP Ian Liddell-Grainger understands the pressures they are under and tells Defra Secretary George Eustice where he sees a potential solution
DEAR George, Put yourself in the mind of a farmer – not so difficult for you, given your background.
Up at six at the latest, first round of the fields and check on the livestock, breakfast, then back to it, either spending half the day in the seat of a tractor with only the radio for company, or moving stock around or carrying out the most essential of the repairs from a growing list of them.
A hurried lunch then back to it until more than 12 hours have rolled round on the clock and you can look forward to supper followed by a couple of hours interpreting the latest regulations on pesticide or fertiliser use, rounding off the day with some bill-shuffling to make sure the right people get paid first so they will continue to supply you.
And just before bed a few minutes looking at the news announcing more increases in the cost of energy along with pledges by supermarkets to keep prices down – which can only spell one thing for you.
And as you turn in for the night you reflect that for all your 12-hourplus day, for all your best efforts to make sure the nation has food on its tables, not once during the day have you had a word of thanks or experienced the merest gesture of appreciation from anybody.
In fact, you can’t remember the last time you did.
Faced with such a situation on a daily basis, is it any wonder farmers are feeling underrated, undervalued and unwanted and that this is having the inevitable negative effect on their mental health? Or, indeed, that figures for farm suicides continue to make such grim reading?
The paradox, of course, is that out there, there are thousands of consumers who do value – and very highly – what farmers produce, who do appreciate all their hard work and who would be devastated to learn how depressed so many of them feel. Yet because they are so remote way down at the other end of the food chain they have no way of expressing their gratitude.
The one place such an expression can be voiced is at a farmers’ market. Whenever I have visited one I have been struck by the enthusiasm shown by consumers for the produce and the way the producers are smiling simply because they have got some positive feedback during the transaction.
I accept entirely that if farmers are only producing wheat or sugar beet or are not into on-farm butchery then they have nothing to take to the local market. But this, George, is why we should be supporting diversification, and the adding of value to food on the farmers’ side of the gate so that we can shorten the food chain and encourage more direct contact between producer and customer.
Even one morning a week meeting and talking to people who are pleased to see you and thank you personally for what you have grown or produced can make a huge difference to a farmer’s self-esteem.
I’m delighted that there has been such a wave lately of TV series profiling farmers and trying to help the public understand more about the industry, its complexities and its challenges.
But I would like to think your department could, equally, look at ways of improving the image of the people who feed us and facilitating more face-to-face contact. I am convinced it would pay dividends.
Yours ever,
Ian