The Young Farmer of Year competition is one of the flagship events on the rural calendar.
By grand final week more than 300 contestants have been whittled down to just a handful. Over several days they compete over a range of practical and technical tasks, an HR challenge, a speech and a fast-paced quiz of agricultural and general knowledge questions.
To help contestants cope with all that pressure and scrutiny, in recent years organisers have arranged mental skills development workshops run by people such as internationally-renowned sports psychologist Gary Hermansson of Massey University.
Hermansson’s worked with the New Zealand Olympic and Commonwealth Games teams, the Black Caps and overseas superstar athletes such as NBA basketballer Kobe Bryant.
That all sounds a long way from Patrick Crawshaw’s 285-hectare sheep and beef farm at Patoka, west of Hastings. But not really. After all, Crawshaw’s no stranger to competition himself. He played age group, representative field hockey for New Zealand when he was at school and university. But entering Young Farmers was still a big deal for him.
“You put an awful lot of pressure on yourself to perform at that level. Gary gave us tools and tricks to manage those emotions. His main message was to stay present and stay in the moment. Rather than letting your mind run away with ‘what ifs’ and fear of failure, it’s all about staying in the moment and not letting your brain distract you from the task at hand.”
Did it work?
“Yes it did. During the comp there were definitely times when the blinkers of stress came on for me and I needed a moment to step back and focus on what was the actual task and not do things in a flustered way. But it takes practice to recognise the signs and address them before they affect your performance. For me, it was an unknown, but I got a lot of value from it.”
2017 winner Nigel Woodhead echoes that praise.
“I don’t think I would’ve won if I hadn’t had that session. We learnt how to focus on looking forward the whole time. It’s about taking a minute and resetting, especially when things are going badly. Nine times out of ten, things are never as bad as they appear. If you just take a minute and take a few deep breaths, all of sudden you start seeing things more rationally, instead of emotionally.”
Woodhead admits he was skeptical at first.
“I used to struggle with this sort of stuff to be honest, but I thought, what have I got to lose? And it worked. All of a sudden it freed me of all the bullshit in my head. I remember walking into the session with Gary a nervous wreck, my stomach tied in knots not knowing what was coming up and I walked out going, ‘yeah, I got this.’
Logan Wallace bounced back from disappointment to scoop the top prize in 2018. He runs a 290 hectare sheep farm in South Otago.
“This competition is really widely followed and that 50th year had a few extra eyes on it. I was a returning finalist. The first time I did it, I was nervous, I made a few mistakes and then my mistakes compounded and I folded. But after those workshops and other preparation I did, I’d learnt that when a wee thing goes wrong not to worry about it. I remember noticing one of the other competitors make a mistake and seeing their shoulders drop. And I felt for them because I’d done that the year before.
“The workshop was all about keeping to your game plan. That ability to focus and ignore the stuff that’s happening around you. So if I got a question wrong, I ignored the next question, re-focused and came back in. I gave myself time to recover, cleared my head and moved on. That really helped me win.
“Another thing was having a system in place, like a breathing exercise, to calm yourself down and reset when you get flustered. I found it really useful and used it to before each module during the competition. Those workshops were incredibly valuable for the contestants and I think it’s an important part of making sure you look after people who enter.”
Back on the farm all three are busy applying what they learnt. Crawshaw says the session with Hermansson brought home the similarities between top level sport and farming.
“There used to be a bad stigma when you started talking about stuff to do with the mind, but I think that’s changing. Farming is a pressured game like rugby. You’re dealing with biological things out of your control, whether it’s the weather, animals or organisms – good and bad. This means as farmers we are often in situations which are unlikely to go to plan. I think we should be thinking about ourselves as the All Blacks of farming. What mental skills do we need to perform at an All Black level in farming? How we respond to events and manage ourselves has massive implications for our business.”
Wallace agrees. He took over running the family farm 5 years ago.
“Stepping up has been a big thing for me, but I’ve learnt to really focus my mind on the task at hand because that means you are less likely to make mistakes or have accidents.”
Woodhead, who runs a 400-hectare sheep and beef farm in Milton, admits it’s harder to apply healthy thinking strategies when ‘things are coming at you all the time’.
“The big thing with farmers is that a lot of us are out on our own. The All Blacks are in a group environment. If you’re outside on the farm ten to twelve hours a day on your own with your dogs, you’re basically accountable just to yourself. And sometimes you can be your own worst boss,” he says.
“Every farmer knows the most important asset on the farm is themselves, but we’re not always willing to invest in ourselves. And investing in yourself is bigger than just dollars and cents. When you’re the person that everything around you relies on, you need to be on your game and mental resilience is a big part of that.”
Farmstrong is a rural wellbeing programme that aims to help farmers and farming families live well to farm well. To find out what works for you and ‘lock it in’, check out our farmer-to-farmer videos, stories and tips on www.farmstrong.co.nz.
