animal health | Farmstrong Scotland: Tips for maintaining your well-being

A new wellbeing initiative that's currently being promoted across Scotland, is aimed at encouraging farmers and crofters to make small and regular investments in their ‘wellbeing account’ to draw on, when times are tough.

The Farmstrong programme, launched in New Zealand in 2015, offers a practical approach to managing stress, through advocating simple habits and ways of thinking, which give farmers the tools to help them through difficult times. Gerard Vaughan has been key to delivering the programme in NZ and over the last two years has been supporting with the adoption of the programme here in Scotland.

The SF caught up with Gerard ahead of the Farmstrong Scotland Tour – which New Zealander Marc Gascoigne is currently taking around the country – to hear a little more about the roots of Farmstrong NZ and the support it offers.

“We started working on the idea 10 years ago, working closely with around 30 organisations who were really concerned about the wellbeing of farmers in New Zealand. When we launched two years later, it coincided with the massive downturn in dairy in 2015 and although this was purely coincidence, it came at an important time,” he said.

Farmstrong was founded by rural insurer, Farmers Mutual Group and the Mental Health Foundation, and has been heavily supported by the Movember foundation.

“Farmstrong takes a unique approach to tackling poor mental health within the farming industry, one centred around ‘wellness not illness’,” continued Gerard. “Investing in your wellbeing is good for business and we encourage farmers to develop small and regular habits in areas such as managing stress and pressure, sleep, nutrition, keeping ‘farm fit’ and scheduling rest and recovery time.”

The initiative packages the science of wellbeing into farmer-friendly, real-life examples such as body conditioning videos showing routines to help strengthen and prevent muscle strains, using readily available items on the farm like buckets, tractor tyres and hay bales.

Gerard explained that research played a huge role in developing relevant solutions to meet different sector needs and large studies have been carried out over the past 10 years identifying the key challenges to wellbeing faced by the study participants.

New Zealander Marc Gascoigne on the first night of his Farmstrong Scotland tour in collaboration with Carol McLaren of RSABI and Alan Laidlaw of RHASS

Their initial survey of over 250 farmers and growers identified that the biggest challenges facing the industry were: not sleeping; not getting time off; not coping with stress and feeling isolated.

“When we first conducted research on wellbeing in the farming industry, 90% of respondents said there wasn’t enough help for farmers when experiencing high levels of stress. We also identified issues around geography and sector type, with discussions on these issues often being quite siloed,” he said.

“I’ve worked in mental health for 25 years and have discovered that people who are often struggling can sometimes struggle for a decade or two before they would let anyone know or ask for help. With Farmstrong, we don’t want people waiting a decade or two, we want to normalise these conversations and offer practical ideas on what they can do.”

He explained that a big part of the work they do is sharing farmer-to-farmer stories about not only what struggles they may have faced but what worked for them, to manage their stress. These are shared via social media or in-person events and Farmstrong’s website is key to ensuring the messages reach farmers and growers.

Since 2016, there have been over 0.5m unique visitors to the website, which is a one-stop portal to a wide range of resources, events and activities and has connected a geographically diverse and remote audience in New Zealand.

“Stories are so important to us and every fortnight we work with a farmer and share their story via books, podcasts, webinars, videos or blogs. The key to making our messages land, is not by driving people to our website but by going through channels where farmers are already actively seeking information on general farming,” he pointed out.

“We find that a lot of farmers don’t go looking for information on wellbeing but this can be a really good way of reaching some of those who otherwise may get lost.”

A big part of what Farmstrong does is help farmers and growers to connect and stay connected, and encourages them to take breaks away from the farm. “Drawing on our network we help organise events that boost people’s wellbeing and raise awareness about living well to farm well.

“Some examples over the years include hosting comedy shows, fundraisers, touch rugby tournaments and a cycle tour which gathered the support of 1600 farmers and their families.”

Gerard shared a water tank analogy that he said resonated well with farming audiences around farming resilience. “When we are born, we have a generous supply of resilience and wellbeing but when life events come our away, those stocks can deplete,” he said.

“Life will continue to make withdrawals on our wellbeing, so we need to keep topping it up as operating on an empty tank will lead to burnout and mental stress.”

He added that dipping into the red zone was a warning sign that reserves were running low, reiterating that having simple and regular habits to keep your ‘wellbeing tank’ topped up, could get you out of this zone.

“Farmers are business people and we need to convince them that good wellbeing makes business sense. Part of this task involves delivering our five ways to wellbeing which is backed by science and is a simple and effective way to help farmers invest in their wellbeing account.”

The five ways to wellbeing include (see graphic):

• Connect – developing new friendships and spending time with friends. Prioritising time away from work.

• Give – Giving your time to others, be that through supporting those having a tough time or spending quality time with family.

• Take notice – Take time to pause and think about what you appreciate. Find the simple things that make you happy and pay attention to them, if only for a few moments.

• Keep learning – Be curious on and off the farm. Learning new things is good for your brain, will keep your mind active and help you farm smarter.

• Be active – Working up a sweat releases endorphins that make you feel alert and better able to cope with challenges. Make physical activity a habit, aim for at least 30 minutes of movement a day.

Looking towards the rollout of the programme in Scotland, chair of Farmstrong Scotland, John Scott, explained that they will be drawing on the NZ blueprint but making it fit for Scotland. “The success of Farmstrong Scotland will be down to strong collaboration with industry partners and we want to make sure we align with the unique needs of farmers and crofters here,” he said.

“The reason why we did research with hundreds of farmers before looking to rollout the initiative is to do just that, to make sure we get it right. Everyone has volunteered their time to work on this and the next step will be to create ambassadors who will be trained up to share these messages and will understand the nuances, the science behind the programme and its practical application.

“The health service will not fix the problems facing society alone, we need to create population level programmes which farmers can engage in, and we hope this could go a long way in supporting our farmer and crofters to ‘live well, to farm and croft well,” concluded John.

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