Mental Health Awareness week takes place this year at a time when my family and I are grieving the loss of someone dear to us who recently lost her battle with cancer. Someone who was loved and admired in the farming community. A lady who played a pivotal role for young farmers and someone who is going to be very sadly missed.

For my farmer, this brings back memories he would rather not have. It reminds me that there is an element of farming, an expectation, that farmers will just get on with it. No matter what happens. No matter how much they are scrutinised. No matter what the consequences are to their mental health.

As I think about Mental Health Awareness week, I reflect on the pressures placed on my farmer: Like in all businesses, there is the ambition to produce the best quality product, to run an efficient business that generates a profit and has the flexibility to adapt and survive.

In farming businesses there is so much more. The pressure to succeed like the generations before, the pressure to do the right thing for every party; the land, the livestock, your family and an intense pressure to work hard; a kind of peer pressure that is often measured and evaluated in physical hours worked.

Farming is a privilege. Farming families live privileged lives. As farmers, we are custodians of the land and we benefit from all that the land provides for us. For our mental health. We have nature all around us. We know how lucky we are.

However, with that privilege comes a burden. Many farmers are managing a business that is entangled in complex family histories. A business that is not only governed by market forces, but also by the forces of nature. A business that is increasingly publicly criticised, in an industry that is not widely understood.

Now, more than ever before, my farmer feels the pressure to justify his role as a farmer. To find and implement the solutions for the climate agenda. To produce exceptional quality food at affordable prices. To protect and secure the future of the wildlife that we share this planet with.

And the expectation that he and our farmers, will just get on with it.

The coronavirus pandemic has placed us all in isolation. Isolation that has had grave consequences for some and had a negative impact on the mental health of many.

This type of isolation can exist relentlessly for farmers.

My wish is that we may use the experience of living through the pandemic, as a small step towards relating to how emotionally, physically and mentally exhausting it can be to be a farmer.

There are some frightening statistics about suicide rates in farming. As the wife of a farmer, the knowledge of that fact is always present in my subconscious.

Perhaps the amount of time our farmers can spend immersed in nature, plays a crucial role in assisting them to continue to do the amazing job they do, every day.

No matter what.