A popular New Zealand farm blogger has shared an emotional post, asking New Zealanders to try and listen to the concerns of farmers.
'WhatshesaidNZ' is written by a young mum, Hannah, and is described as blogging on "Mum life, Mental health, Farm life, Food".
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In a new blog post, she explained why she hadn't posted any writing since June.
"Some of you may be wondering why I have been absent on here for the past few months. A few of you even messaged me to check I was okay. I am thank you.
The short answer is I'm tired."
She said it had been the couple's first year in business, taking over the lease of their family dry stock farm.
"It's been hard. The days are long and often lonely. My husband has worked 12 hour plus days, in the rain, wind and cold."
"I am a full-time mum, I also run the business side of our investments and I work part-time to make ends meet.
We rarely see each other," she said.
She also explained how local and central Government policies had added to their stress, including the Waikato Healthy Rivers Plan Change 1, the Zero Carbon Bill, and the National Freshwater Policy Statement.
"These are all major policies that have come about in a very short period of time. Each comes with a raft of different documents relating to the proposals often over 100 pages long. That's a lot of reading and a lot of information to digest. It's also a lot of uncertainty."
She said many people asked her why she and her husband continue to farm.
"Honestly, I ask myself the same thing every day. But we're doing it. We chose it. And we worked our butts off to get ourselves in a financial position to be able to do this for the last 10 years."
"I think a lot of people generally think farmers are just a bunch of entitled moaners."
She asked New Zealanders to "listen to farmers."
"There are a lot of farmers out there at the moment trying to have their voice heard over the noise in the media but no one is listening.
"As a dry stock farmer, the saddest part of all this, is not only the impact it's having on the farming industry as a whole, but the impact it's having within it," she said.
At the recent launch of the freshwater proposals, the Agriculture Minister, Damien O'Connor acknowledged the stress many farmers were feeling.
"What we have to do is work with the farmers, who are under pressure at the moment," he said.
"They feel bombarded by people in the cities who don't understand what they do and don't understand the value of their contribution to our economy and need to get up to speed with that," said O'Connor.
"But the farmers also need to understand that there are ways of conducting their farm management systems that have lower impacts on the environment."
Newshub.
