A major survey has been launched by farming charity, the Royal Agricultural Benevolent Institution (RABI), to better understand the physical and mental toll of farming today.
RABI’s Big Farming Survey aims to be the largest ever piece of research of its kind across England and Wales, and looks at the interactions between physical health, mental wellbeing and the health of farm businesses.
The survey is now live and runs until 31 March 2021. In this time, the charity aims to gather more than 26,000 replies in order to get a balanced response from a cross section of the whole of the farming community.
It is open to all farming people – owner occupiers, tenants, farm workers, spouses and young people aged 18 and over.
Launching the survey, RABI said:
Farming people are facing increasingly complex and wide-ranging challenges that can often have a negative impact on their health and wellbeing.
The full extent of how these pressures are affecting the agricultural community is not yet entirely known or defined.
In response, RABI has commissioned an unprecedented research project in collaboration with the University of Exeter.
The research aims to deliver invaluable insight into the challenges that a generation of farming people face and improve our understanding of how farming today is impacting physical and mental wellbeing, in addition to the health of farm businesses.
Sally Conner, RABI’s North East Regional Manager, added:
I would like to encourage all people from the farming community, not just the farmers themselves, from Yorkshire to complete this survey.
We need a broad spectrum of replies from all areas, so to have a good response from Yorkshire will highlight how we live and cope in the varied and specific lifestyles that Yorkshire creates.
Key findings from the survey will be published next autumn with free access to a subsequent report made available to sector partners.
The data collected will help RABI to work with its partners to understand how to develop its services to empower farming people to overcome challenges, and increase farmer resilience now and into the future.
The survey is available online at http://ex.ac.uk/BigFarmingSurvey or, to request a printed copy, email FarmSurvey@exeter.ac.uk
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