Rural charity, Farm Safety Foundation, otherwise known as Yellow Wellies, is running its eighth annual Mind Your Head campaign, aiming to raise awareness of, and tackle the stigma around poor mental health in the farming industry.
Recent research by the charity revealed that poor mental health among farmers and agricultural workers is deteriorating. In the sample of over 750 farmers, 9 out of 10 respondents (91%) agreed that poor mental health is the ‘biggest hidden problem’ facing the industry today.
The charity’s research showed that, on average, farmers worked longer hours in 2024 than they did in 2023. On average a full-time worker in the UK works 36.4 hours per week, however UK farmers work an average of 60 hours a week with an alarming 44% of those aged between 41 and 60 years working more than 81 hours a week.
One in three farmers (33%) who work more than nine hours a day admit to having had an accident or a near miss in the past 12 months demonstrating the link between long hours and working safely. When mental wellbeing is factored in, the evidence revealed that farmers with lower mental wellbeing scores were significantly more likely to admit to working unsafely and risk-taking.
The charity recently brought together some members of the Scottish Association of Young Farmer’s Clubs (SAYFC) from the Angus area joined by HRH, The Prince of Wales to a special roundtable to learn about their attitudes to resilience and address loneliness and rural isolation. SAYFC have encouraged conversations around mental health as far back as 2016 when it launched “Are Ewe Okay?”, an initiative aiming to break the stigma surrounding mental wellbeing for young farmers based in rural Scotland.
Stephanie Berkeley, manager of the Farm Safety Foundation at East Scryne Farm, said: “This has been a challenging time for farming – the most challenging I can recall. The pressures on farmers today are unlike anything we’ve seen before. Farming has always been one of the most demanding industries, but the added strain of long hours, rural isolation and financial insecurity is putting farmers at risk. For us to change the cultural reluctance to discuss mental health, we need to listen and learn what young farmers are feeling, what their attitudes are and what they are doing to address it themselves.”
For more information on the Mind Your Head campaign please visit www.yellowwellies.org or follow it on social media – @yellowwelliesUK on Facebook, Instagram and X using the hashtag #MindYourHead.