Your regional Rural Support Trust (RST) is on-hand to support farmers being affected by M. bovis.

Our services are free and confidential.

As well as someone to talk to about your concerns, we can help you navigate through the process. We have training in and experience with the M. bovis programme, and know how it works.

Whatever your experience looks like, we can help in many ways including:

• Trained facilitators who know how the programme works, and the process involved to help you navigate though.
• Listening to your concerns and issues.
• Confidentiality.
• Phone calls, texts, emails – at a time that suits you.
• Visiting and attending meetings with you.
• One on one support and wrap around support – for you, your family, and your farming team.
• Connecting – if we don’t know the answer we will help connect you to people who do.
• Peer support – connecting with other farmers that have been through the process.
• Helping you and your family access counselling services.

Depending on the individual farming operation it can be a lengthy process, involving a number of M. bovis Programme teams and RSTs offer support throughout the process and the ability to help shift things along if they get stuck.

We are rural people, helping rural people – we are farming people who understand the challenges of rural life.

Just call 0800 787 254 (0800 RURAL HELP). There are Rural Support Trust branches all over the country. Ringing 0800 787 254 will connect you to help in your area.

Supporting Our Rural Community

0800 RURAL HELP

www.rural-support.org.nz

Before snow hits

• Keep an eye on climate predictions and talk to your neighbours.
• Plan how you will deal with no power (no electric fences, pumps, milking, refrigeration, hot water, cook or heating). If necessary, source a generator.
• Stockpile what you might need for home and farm to minimise travel:
  • Surplus feed
  • Generators
  • Food and alternative means of cooking and heating for your home
  • Emergency kit.
• Have a battery-powered radio.
• Have a smartphone, and know how to use it and how to charge it up in the car
• If you need to travel any distance, make sure you are well-equipped for the cold and let someone know where you are and when to expect you back.
• Have a flexible feed plan underway for stock.
• If you know it’s coming, move stock to sheltered paddocks, especially young stock, to reduce exposure.
• Make sure stock can access food and water, and you can access them.

Perhaps the biggest hinderance to farmers' wellbeing is their lack of social life, says former police crisis negotiator Lance Burdett, who has begun his tour of the South Island to encourage wellness.

https://ruralnewsgroup.co.nz/rural-news/rural-general-news/farmers-it-s-good-to-talk?fbclid=IwAR1ddSAGlktVp5OfckrHCJlXCYLaLZHMHuesQljcIjUW0wFRM5X8uYtylfY

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