This week is Mental Health Awareness Week, so we saw it fitting to raise awareness of how you can help us to help a cause close to our hearts.

As Doug Avery puts it, today’s farmers are faced with the three pillars of social, environmental and financial impacts. Add to that the physical isolation of living on a farm and you have the perfect catalyst for mental health struggles.

While many large corporations are implementing wellbeing programmes, flexible working arrangements and wellness rooms to combat their employee’s challenges, the same outcome is not as simple for a farmer or their employees.

They are battling the physical, mental and emotional pressures that farming can bring. These unique set of challenges that farmers face aren’t just going to disappear, which is why we need to help farmers develop a wellbeing programme that works for them. That’s where Farmstrong comes in.

Farmstrong is a nationwide wellbeing programme for the rural community, with the aim of helping you live well, to farm well. It was founded by farmers, with the intention of giving their peers the resources they may need to open up the conversation about mental health, and strategies to becoming more resilient.

“We share farmer-to-farmer tips, supported and informed by wellbeing science. These will help you increase your wellbeing so you can cope better with the ups and downs of farming” - Farmstrong.

This year, four of our awesome Figured staff are entering as a relay team into the Taupo 100km Ultramarathon, with the hopes of raising $10,000 for Farmstrong.

“We're a bunch of people closely connected to the New Zealand’s agricultural sector through the software product we’ve developed. We also love the work Farmstrong do to support the health and well-being of Kiwi farmers - helping them to live well and farm well. So, we thought wouldn't it be awesome if we could use this opportunity to get some sponsorship and raise some money” says John Gibson, GM New Zealand & Australia.

Figured staff are close to the rural community, working with farmers every day and many, coming from farming backgrounds, so they really understand the pain points that a modern farmer faces. When weather conditions change, commodity prices change or crop yields don’t go to plan, this can add significant financial stress to a farmer’s already heavy workload. That’s where technology can help make things easier by making your farm more efficient, and freeing up your time.

We designed our platform to help farmers understand exactly where they are and where they’re going, financially, through accurate planning and forecasting. Our aim is for Figured to help alleviate the pain points of the financial pillar, so that farmers can realise what their personal goals are and how they can attain them.

If you’d like to support the Figured Team and Farmstrong, check out this givealittle page.