‘There is an endless stream of work to do’

‘Endless stream of work to do’, says UFU deputy president Victor

From roads issues to palliative care and mental health, Victor Chestnutt comes across a huge variety of issues in his role as the UFU’s deputy president.

And a ‘typical week’ is something that doesn’t exist.

“Every week is unique, especially in this job,” he says.

“On any day you could be anywhere in the north or indeed the south, or further afield.”

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He adds with a laugh: “I suppose my son and my wife just have to take any days I’m at home as a bonus, or maybe they don’t look at it as a bonus at all, maybe they think I’m there to scold!”

But he says feelingly: “There are sometimes you have to walk away from your farm, and go out on a day when you’d much rather stay at it.

“But when I took on this role I knew that went with the territory, and I suppose somebody has to do it, and I certainly I enjoy doing it.

“From time to time there’ll be farmers who thank you for doing something to help them and it’s good to feel appreciated.”

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And speaking about the vast range of topics the UFU deals with, he says it’s “10 times the amount of material I ever believed they would have covered”.

He continues: “Take this morning, for example.

“I was in a meeting with the Department of Health talking about palliative care, and how we can get our farming community to talk about this, and see it differently.

“Yesterday I had a roads issues meeting.

“And over the last year we had a series of mental health evenings hosted by Doug Avery (New Zealand’s ‘Resilient Farmer’) in which we wanted our farmers to come away with the message that it’s OK to not be OK, and to impress upon them how they should open up about their feelings, and ask for help if they are feeling pressure.

“We also have farm safety partnerships through which we are trying to get farmers to take that extra minute and think to themselves, ‘is there any safer way we can do that job’.”

He adds: “There is just an endless stream of work to be done.”