Farmers are leaders in rolling with the times and dealing with adversities such as weather, earthquakes, interest rate rises, commodity price fluctuations, fuel costs and the many other influences outside their control.
I believe New Zealand farmers lead the world and will lead the research into sustainable farming because we have to. Our country needs us, too, because we will be and still are the main income earner for this country and are also the supporters of so many industries and retail businesses from clothing to finance.
The start of the year has been a little tough when I sit back and look over the last month.
I’ll be honest, I’ve shed tears more than I should have but it has been a roller coaster.
The early part of January saw my good friend Ricky May suffer a medical event while driving a race horse at the Omakau race meeting. It was very public as it was being screened on Trackside television and it didn’t look good. To cut a long story short he needed CPR and a helicopter trip to a hospital or two and now has a device in him that is equivalent to a Gallagher electric fence unit. But for a few days he tore at the heart strings of people from around the world as he was diagnosed, repaired and released.
On the way home from seeing Ricky in Dunedin I called in to see an old mate of mine on Mt Pisa station who had been flattened by a horse and, as the elderly statesman he is, didn’t fare to well. This will be a long road back to walking for Murray MacMillan, another well respected local of the Cromwell area and never shy to lend a hand to those in need.
On the trip home from Mt Pisa I got a message to say a friend in Ohakune had died in a farm bike accident.
By this stage I was thinking aloud about how these injuries and losses were going to affect the communities they live in. Ronald Frew is part of the Frew family who commercially market garden and farm at Waimarino, Ronald shore sheep for my father and is heavily involved in the Waimarino shearing competition held annually. I worked for his father as a mechanic and think of the family as good friends. They have employed many a worker and contributed to the local community for years so another huge loss as Ronald leaves behind his family at 53 years of age.
Just this week I have heard of another loss in the Ashburton area of a farm contractor to a medical event in his early 40s, leaving a family again with pain and disbelief.
The Farmer First health check programme we have started now becomes more relavent to me as we start the New Year.
We can’t see every farmer in the country and we can’t stop accidents but I hope we can get that conversation going where farmers’ physical health is talked about and acted on as often as we think about servicing our machinery.
We are really finding some issues out there.
This week we attended the Hawarden ewe fair and tested more than 60 farmers, both male and female.
The ability to get a doctor in front of rural people in their own environment is a powerful catalyst for change in the way the farmers think about getting checked. We won’t pick up everything or get everyone in the door but we are getting people talking and many that are getting checked are making life changes as the follow-up calls are finding.
As you can see by the people I have talked about in this column everyone has people they influence in their lives, family that need and care for them, communities they are a part of be it small or large and an industry they devote their lives to.
The last Farmers Voice video featuring the Copland family talks of the hardship of losing a son and how they got through it. The pain and tears flowed freely as we filmed that video and as with those who have lost family this month you have my respect and condolences.
If our travelling around the sale yards and farmer events can save but one person’s family from a loss that might have been prevented by a simple health check then that’s a reason to make sure we continue the journey around rural NZ. The simple fact is we are losing too many farmers and they are a breed worth fighting for. Let’s try to take some control of this issue we can have some influence on.
