Western Daily Press (Saturday)
Well-being of farmers has been overlooked
Bridgwater and West Somerset MP Ian Liddell-Grainger tells Defra Secretary Thérèse Coffey that the extent to which mental health problems affect the farming community is still not appreciated.
DEAR Thérèse World Mental Health Day this week led me to reflect on the continuing need for us to keep focused on the farming community’s needs. For, as research continues to show us, most farmers’ lives are far removed from the carefree, outdoor existence that so many people outside agriculture still believe they enjoy.
The reality – that farming can place intolerable mental strains on individuals – has only been accepted as the more accurate picture in the last few decades. But I came across a particularly shocking statistic when leafing through various reports: that only around 55 per cent of farmers now feel positive about their mental health. I merely observe that if this state of affairs were found to exist in any other employment sector alarm bells would be sounded and we should be rushing in reinforcements to do something about it.
It’s not hard to see how the pressures build up. Number one is isolation: farmers spend long hours working alone with far too much time to reflect negatively on their situation and they are also, increasingly, suffering social isolation. There are fewer farmers than there were so opportunities for meeting other farmers down the pub to talk things over (the best form of therapy, as someone has suggested to me) have been largely removed.
In fact a farmer is more likely to be in a minority of one in his community these days and – particularly if that community has been swollen by the arrival of urban escapees – more likely to suffer opprobrium as the bloke who covers the roads with mud and fills the air with noxious odours.
Financial pressures have always been an issue in agriculture mainly because neither the food industry nor, I regret to say, the Government provide sufficiently generous remuneration for the invaluable work farmers do in feeding the nation – a situation which, apart from the sheer magnitude of the nightmare of not having enough money at the end of every month merely leads to farmers feeling undervalued and seeing the job they do as pointless, so cranking up the mental pressure even further.
We absolutely must get to grips with these problems because it is scandalous that every year statistics are simply trotted out relating to the appalling suicide rates in agriculture and no-one seems particularly inclined to launch the kind of initiative we clearly need to improve farmers’ mental wellbeing.
It has been pointed out – and I touched on this earlier – that being able to share problems with other farmers is one of the most effective safety valves for those farmers who are starting to feel it’s all getting too much for them. And I therefore applaud the work of the various charities that are now out there in the community offering a listening ear and really helpful advice for those who have come up against a brick wall.
Having spoken to a number of people who work for these organisations I appreciate, too, that but for their intervention on many occasions those suicide statistics could have looked much blacker.
And that’s why I believe we should be offering more financial support to these organisations which are tackling the problem at ground level. They speak the farmers’ own language and there are none of the psychological barriers that might exist when a farmer talks to a health professional. A Government-led initiative on farmers’ mental health might do some good: far more could be done, I would argue, by supporting those who are already doing the work.
Yours ever
Ian