Ms Teresa Roche:

Our project has shown and identified that one of our most vulnerable sectors is agriculture. We have to accept and highlight that the mental health and well-being of our farmers is a priority in agriculture. For this most vulnerable sector, and the needs and challenges that farmers face, our project for the farmer health check programme highlighted at least 23 red flags that showed the challenges farmers face each day. These challenges can be anything from TB, which the Senator mentioned, and disease on farms, domestic issues, a lack of succession planning, accidents, illnesses that occur due to farm accidents and fatalities on farms, down to well-being issues. Those in this vulnerable sector are often the ones who do not access the services. We wanted to change behaviours and attitudes with our farmer health check programme. If you can change the behaviours and attitudes of farmers and families - this is open to men, women and their young adults - people can access this service in the most rural communities.

As Ms McGlynn mentioned, we met people in the most isolated communities. We want to bring the services to them, so we can reach their needs. We are coming to them. We are offering a professional service and a full health check. We are all about preventative care and making people aware of their health, well-being and mental health. If we can improve their health and well-being, and their mental health, they will make better decisions on their farm, including better financial decisions and safer decisions on their farm through farm safety, and they will make a better income overall. Their farms will be productive in the long term. We want to show that farmers are very vulnerable to environmental factors. We can talk about storms and different issues on the ground that make us vulnerable. We have to protect our farming community overall.