Farming has always been an occupation involving plenty of pressure - managing the weather, competing with other nations to trade products globally, and dealing with fluctuating and unpredictable prices are just some of the issues needing to be dealt with.
Corrigan Sowman has investigated how this pressure is affecting farmer decision-making globally and what it means for change in the New Zealand primary sector.
"There's a lot going on," Sowman told Rural Exchange. "Changes in a lot of policy, central freshwater, climate change [and] now we've got COVID-19 - there's an awful lot of pressure for farmers."
Sowman says as part of his research he travelled to a number of other countries.
"I saw that same pressure New Zealand farmers are under in all parts of the globe. And while the background issues might be a little bit different, farmers were expressing the same sort of concern to me around how they were being perceived by society, how they were starting to question some of their identity around the nobility of producing food, etc."
Listen to Sowman's interview.
This article was created for Bayleys Real Estate, as a sponsor of the Pulse of the Country on Rural Exchange.
Rural Exchange with Hamish McKay and Richard Loe, 6-8am Saturday and Sunday on Magic Talk.
