Alleviating stress on dairy farms – interim funding

Where to now? Supporting stressed farmers and farm staff through effective partnerships

When farmers are distressed they make poor decisions because they typically narrowly focus on individual items and tasks, become overwhelmed and lose sight of the bigger picture. Recent research has shown that farmer distress occurs mainly as a consequence of poor resilience.

Distress has serious physical and emotional health consequences like anxiety and depression and it can lead to suicide. 25 New Zealand farmers kill themselves every year. Huge gaps exist in addressing dairy farmer wellness and wellbeing and this project helps to fill these gaps by providing a backbone for and delivery of distress prevention and cure to farmers.

Expected outcomes of this project

Benefit

Farmers’ wellness issues will be identified and dealt with faster and better because the guide for identifying farmer wellness issues enabled a range of people who interact with dairy farmers and farm staff to identify and appropriately respond to potential and current wellness issues.

The four major existing networks collaborate and are guided by a jointly developed wellness strategy so that farmers become more resilient and receive the right support.