Spencer
Member
- Location
- North West
Interesting.. Find the Veterinarians a bit of a curve ball
Blood on their hands?
- Thread starter Bald Rick
- Start date
All the people I know committed suicide were farmers , however I know of 3 planning officers did alsoInteresting.. Find the Veterinarians a bit of a curve ball
Spencer
Member
- Location
- North West
Only knew as we had a large application going through ... oopsSnap
Not the planning officers though.
Thatās for the US no?
Top 10 Jobs with Highest Suicide Rates | Choices Psychotherapy
Almost every job has some sort of level of stress. A number of things can create employment nerve-wracking. So what are the jobs with highest suicide rates?
choicespsychotherapy.net
- Location
- South Pennines ol14
I remember a lady my mum was friends with all her brothers committed suicide all were farmers
That would be 40 or more years ago, I am not so sure farming ( in my case) is anymore stressful than when I was ā on the tools ā
Iāve suffered this last year , not only due to farming but general pressure of life , maybe itās a personality thing that leads people to feel so desperate
One thing I do know is please talk to someone if you find yourself in the depths
That would be 40 or more years ago, I am not so sure farming ( in my case) is anymore stressful than when I was ā on the tools ā
Iāve suffered this last year , not only due to farming but general pressure of life , maybe itās a personality thing that leads people to feel so desperate
One thing I do know is please talk to someone if you find yourself in the depths
Could be , put uk in but google didn;t do itThatās for the US no?
Top 10 Jobs with Highest Suicide Rates | Choices Psychotherapy
Almost every job has some sort of level of stress. A number of things can create employment nerve-wracking. So what are the jobs with highest suicide rates?
ollie989898
Member
Interesting.. Find the Veterinarians a bit of a curve ball
It's because being a vet is actually quite a lonely profession. There are all of the pressures (plus having to make a profit) with nothing like the peer networking there is in medicine.
Dentistry is another potentially quite lonely profession- in the USA, I understand that dental assistants receive training to be able to detect potential suicide risk in their colleagues.
I think farming is an elevated risk because of the pressure and again there is a complete lack of peer support network. I get routine peer support briefings basically annually. Wellbeing is a big focus in virtually every organisation I flow through.
Spencer
Member
- Location
- North West
Your fecking shitting me right?
ollie989898
Member
There is no doubt in my mind that there is the added pressure involved if you are not just a professional but also a partner/shareholder in a business and shoulder the responsibility that all of that brings. I've known people who work as GPs who get on fine doing their job but then they become partners and they find it is too much for them. Suddenly you bring profit into the equation and that isn't something they will teach you about in vet school/medical school.
I don't think the loneliness is paramount it leverages. Viktor Frankel, holocaust survivor said "if you have a why you can endure any how" It is the "why" we lack.
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ollie989898
Member
Yes , I'm used to sh!t , it's when things are looking good I get worried
Could be UK actually. Google isnāt very forthcoming for up to date info. Put Uk in and you get US and India near the top, but your list does look UK-based.
Woolless
Member
- Location
- Berwickshire, Scottish Borders
Vets have always been near the top. Bumping off animals regularly, historically I think Brucellosis was a factor.Interesting.. Find the Veterinarians a bit of a curve ball
Spencer
Member
- Location
- North West
Have you ever run your own business? Or been a partner?
ollie989898
Member
What fudging odds does that make? You're denying that there is no added pressure from being a shareholder, director or partner in a business in addition to your usual responsibilities?
Spencer
Member
- Location
- North West
Like I said, curveball. Just wouldnāt have guessed it but not saying it isnāt so.
Spencer
Member
- Location
- North West
It was a question not after odds?
Hindsight
Member
- Location
- Lincolnshire
I read the article. I thought the punchline was going to be Cheerful Charlie taking tea along with a laptop and SFI application to put the whole farm into Pollen and Nectar. But no. Heād be better off. But possibly not as good Telly.not trying to do the man out of the job , but I think he is very busy today
Edited:-
apologies I should have credited this article to Mr. J Clarkson writing in The Times
Ijust tuned into Instagram and there was Adam Henson from Countryfile telling us, I thought rather smugly, that his Maris Otter barley has passed all the tests and will now be sent off to the maltsters before being turned into a beer that he has decided to launch. No clue where he got that idea from.
Well, bully for you, Adam, because my barley has not passed all the tests. So it will not be going to the maltsters and it will not end up in your next pint of Hawkstone. Instead itāll end up in a pig.
Itās pretty much the same story with my wheat. Three years ago I decided that rather than sit around moaning about global warming, Iād grow a variety that likes warm weather. I therefore imported some durum wheat from Italy and sat back to watch the spaghetti growing.
Great. Except that this year there was no global warming. The spring was ridiculously cold and throughout July and August the drizzle stopped only to make way for much heavier spells of rain. And the upshot of that is: it hasnāt passed muster either, so it too will end up in a pig.
We will have some very healthy pigs, thatās for sure. And then they are likely to stay very healthy because it has just been announced that our local abattoir is going to become sustainable eco-housing for hard-working young families in the community. The only option I have is to drive the pigs for one and a half hours to a slaughterhouse that is bloody nearly in Wales and then go to pick them up the next day. Every week. For ever. Thatās economically impractical and itās not nice for the pigs either. So now Iām faced with the prospect of having to sell them. Or hosting one last gigantic bacon-sandwich-and-pork-chop party. With ham hats for the children.
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Of course youāve heard all this before. Farmers moan. I spoke to an old boy the other day and he said that in his 60 years of working the land, only two harvests were what heād call good. This year, though, it was noticeably bad. Very bad. And what made it worse is thatI normally invest maybe Ā£40,000 in seeds, fertiliser and sprays. But last year, thanks to the war in Ukraine and the inflation that resulted, I had to invest Ā£110,000. And then, having done that, all I could do was hope the weather would be good. Which it wasnāt.
In my first year of farming I made a profit of Ā£114. That will look like a dream result when I get the figures for this year.
Small wonder that I heard the other day of a young farmer who finished the harvest, dug a hole in the garden, climbed in and shot himself. Itās all right for Adam Henson, because somehow his stuff grew well, and itās all right for me, because I had Amazon in the background. But for thousands of other farmers itās not all right: 2023 has been a disaster.
So whatās next? When the government was obsessed with cutting carbon emissions to zero, it actively persuaded farmers to stop growing food, which is obviously idiotic. We have a climate thatās changing but no real idea what it will be like in the future. So do I invest in tobacco or rice? And we have standards and bureaucracy in this country that are always ready to leap out of a closet like Cato in the Pink Panther films and hack you to the ground.
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Earlier this year I converted an old Second World War air-raid shelter into a small mushroom facility. Mostly I grew grey oysters, which sold well at local pubs and in our burger van. But Lisa asked that I also grow something called a lionās mane mushroom, which, she says, is very popular with the areaās thin, rich women. At first I said no, but after she said they go for Ā£35 for 150g, I said yes.
I gave up a third of the shelter to lionās mane and they grew well. So I picked them, dehydrated them, put them in a whizzer to turn them into powder ā which the thin, rich women put in their coffee for no obvious reason as thereās no health benefit I can see ā and sent off a sample to some kind of food-checking facility.
It failed. And then a weird mould that smelt like the rotting anus of a putrefying goat infiltrated the air-raid shelter and I had to go in there and clean it out. Which meant I spent an hour vomiting explosively into my facemask. So for the past two weeks Iāve had no mushrooms at all.
BEN CHALLENOR
I do have porridge, though. After the oil seed rape failed in the autumn of last year ā another Ā£3,000 up the Swanee ā I planted oats. Some of these have now been husked and Iāve bought a wooden oat roller that attaches with a vice to my kitchen island so that I can grind my own porridge every morning. Not since I bought a wasabi grater have I felt quite so middle class.
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But do you want to grind your own porridge of a morning? No. Didnāt think so. Thatās why Iām going to get only Ā£200 a tonne for my oats. Because youād rather have Cheerios for your breakfast. And if I try to sell you one of my goats for anything like what it cost to raise, youāll say āHow much?ā and go to McDonaldās instead.
So Iāve tried farming conventionally and it didnāt work. Iāve tried diversifying and that hasnāt really worked either. And Iāve tried with sheep and pigs and cows and that has been a bit of a disaster as well. So I arrived at a crossroads. And was not sure which way to turn.
I could sell the farm and earn far more from the interest than I do from growing bread and beer and vegetable oil. But I like having it and for very good reasons there are no death duties on farmland. So my children like me having it too. This means I have to hang on to it, but what then? Do nothing? That would be heartbreaking. So I have to do something. But what?
I was pondering this all week and then on Friday night my land agent, Cheerful Charlie, dropped in for a cup of tea and announced heād bought all the fertiliser weād need for the next nine months and that Kaleb was already out there drilling cover crops. āWhich put nitrogen in the soil,ā he said excitedly.
So, there we are. The farming circle has begun all over again. And Iām growing nitrogen. Which Iām told, with a bit of HP Sauce, tastes pretty good.
