Fr Tom Lawn is the assistant priest in the Catholic parish of New Plymouth, the main city in the Province of Taranaki - an area in which dairy farming has been long established.

When approached by the Wellington Archdiocese's newspaper WelCom about the impact of the Mycoplasma Bovis, he asked three people in the farming community to provide a reflection.

Mental anguish will hurt the most

Paul Bourke is a farmer in Opunake.

He has done a lot to help set up support groups for farmers dealing with mental illness.

Bourke says support for those operating infected farms is critical.

It is the mental anguish that would hurt the most he said.

"For many, it seems a lifetime's work sent to the slaughter, which must be debilitating and really stressful."

Focus on what you can control; accept the things you can't

Peter Moffit and his wife own two Taranaki dairy farms in an equity partnership.

"At its most basic level, we believe farming to be the use of God-given natural resources to make food that feeds God's people" said Peter.

"At our core as Catholics are our faith and trust in God.

"We can only really focus on what we can control and understand and accept the things we can't."

Empathy and Understanding

Sharemilkers Ruth and Michael Prankerd farm in Southland. They think that it is important to combat fragmentation in the community.

"We must support one another, show empathy and seek to understand others' points-of-view, and treat others as we would want to be treated."

Read all three reflections and Fr Tom's introduction in Welcom

Source

• wn.catholic.org.nz
• Image: tvnz.co.nz

A recent episode of TVNZ's Country Calendar took a look at his life.

Thomson is the parish priest in Tinui. The parish covers a large geographical area stretching from Riversdale Beach, Homewood Road to Whareama and across to Tinui and Castlepoint.

He divides his time between weddings and funerals, Rural Support Trust work and the farm.

He was working as a stock manager in Tinui when he met and later married Jenne Groves.

She is the 4th generation at the 1090-hectare sheep and beef farm named Bush Grove.

Jenne says it was meeting Steve that led to her being the one to take over the family farm in 1984.

They hit tough times when a change in government led to cuts in farm subsidies and interest rates went through the roof.

The 1988 drought was the last straw for Steve. He developed acute depression.

"For six months or so I had no idea I was dealing with depression, but things started coming right almost as soon as I sought help," he said.

Jenne and Steve had been only occasional churchgoers but now found great solace in God.

"We both needed God," Jenne says. "It seemed to be the right time for us to come back to our faith."

He was ordained a priest in 2001.

Steve wanted to support other local farmers in similar trouble.

"I just started helping people, and I decided not to worry about myself. If God wanted me in this particular position on this farm with a rural crisis on, then he'd keep me here."

"And I would make myself available to share what I'd learned with other members of the community."

Click here to view this episode of Country Calendar

If you need help for depression you can:

• Talk to your GP
• Contact your local DHB mental health team
• Call the Depression Helpline on 0800 111 757
• Contact your local Rural Support Trust on 0800 787 254

For more about the Rural Support Trust, visit: www.rural-support.org.nz

For more about depression, visit: https://depression.org.nz

Source

• TVNZ
• The Anglican Diocese of Wellington
• The New Zealand Herald
• Image: Screenshot TVNZ

The bodies of Kim Hunt, 41, and her three children Fletcher, 10, Mia, 8 and Phoebe 6, were found on the family's property near Lockhart on Tuesday.

The next day the body of her husband Geoff Hunt was discovered in a local pond, with a gun nearby and his ute parked next to the water.

A suicide note was apparently left, but it did not offer any reasons for the killings. Police are not looking for anyone else.

The family celebrated a relative's birthday on Saturday and went to a local football game on Sunday, before the children were dropped at St Joseph's school in Lockhart for the last time on Monday.

Kim Hunt, a much loved nurse, was found dead on a path behind her house, not far from the washing line, which on Wednesday still had the family's clothes pegged to it.

Her children were found a few metres away inside their home.

A family friend said Geoff Hunt, who was a grain farmer, had been a pillar of support for his wife as she recovered from serious injuries when her car flipped twice in a 2012 accident.

Kim Hunt was left with a broken neck, seven weeks of post-traumatic amnesia and a brain injury.

She returned to nursing at a local hospital in April.

Superintendent Noble said the small community of Lockhart was suffering badly after the shock killings, as were the students at St Joseph's where counselling has been offered.

"There are little hearts breaking all over the place," he said.

St Joseph's, which has only 73 students, issued a statement expressing deep sadness and saying everyone was praying for the Hunt family.

Parish priest Fr Tony Shipp led a service and the parish church was left open to parents and members of the community.

St Joseph's Primary School will hold a liturgy tomorrow for Fletcher, Mia and Phoebe, and next week a special Mass will be celebrated.

Superintendent Noble could not say what may have caused the killings.

"No doubt life on the land is very difficult. In certain parts of the country at present, it's very hard on people."

But he said the Hunt family appeared well integrated into the community through sports and social events, and were well loved.

"These things don't make sense in the world and sometimes trying to make sense of them is futile," he said.

Sources

• Sydney Morning Herald
• Daily Telegraph
• Image: Sydney Morning Herald

HELPLINES

Lifeline: 0800 543 354 - Provides 24 hour telephone counselling

Youthline: 0800 376 633 or free text 234 - Provides 24 hour telephone and text counselling services for young people

Samaritans: 0800 726 666 - Provides 24 hour telephone counselling.

Tautoko: 0508 828 865 - provides support, information and resources to people at risk of suicide, and their family, whanau and friends.

Whatsup: 0800 942 8787 (noon to midnight)

Kidsline: 0800 543 754 (4pm - 6pm weekdays)

If it is an emergency or you feel you or someone you know is at risk, please call 111

"Since eating this pearl millet, the children are rarely ill," raves Mankar, a slim man with a gray beard, worn clothing and gold-rimmed glasses.

Mankar and his family are participating in a large-scale nutrition experiment.

He is one of about 30,000 small farmers growing the variety, which has unusually high levels of iron and zinc — Indian researchers bred the plant to contain large amounts of these elements in a process they call "biofortification."

The grain is very nutritional," says the Indian farmer, as his granddaughter Kavya jumps up and down in his lap. It's also delicious, he adds. "Even the cattle like the pearl millet."

Mankar's field on the outskirts of the village of Vadgaon Kashimbe is barely 100 meters (328 feet) wide and 40 meters long.

The grain will be ripe in a month, and unless there is a hailstorm — may Ganesha, the elephant god, prevent that from happening — he will harvest about 350 kilograms of pearl millet, says the farmer. It's enough for half a year.

The goal of the project, initiated by the food aid organisation Harvest Plus, is to prevent farmers like Mankar and their families from going hungry in the future.

In fact, the Dhanshakti pearl millet is part of a new "Green Revolution" with which biologists and nutrition experts hope to liberate the world from hunger and malnutrition. Continue reading.

Source: Spiegel Online

Image: AFP

Recipe for prosperity: take flat land, skilled farmers, fertiliser and cows.

Add cheap water. Fold in new tech­nology, lashings of debt and permissive environmental rules.

Voila! In a decade or two you have a thriving district with next-to-no unemployment, a rising population and a rate of economic growth almost twice the national average.

The district is Ashburton, sandwiched between two great braided alpine rivers, the Rakaia and the Rangitata, and serviced by a town bristling with farm accountants and consultants, agricultural-machinery and irrigation-equipment suppliers, and soon to be graced with a smart new art gallery and state-of-the-art sports centre.

The scorched greys and browns evoked by Bill Sutton in his famous Canterbury landscapes have been washed away by water delivered from the 66km Rangitata Diversion Race - an enormous canal built during the 30s Depression and sold by the Crown to local farmers in 1990 for $1 - and distributed through myriad irrigation schemes to 64,000ha of farmland.

Sutton would scarcely recognise this land, now cultivated to a vivid green and populated by giant centre-pivot irrigators that creep slowly across broad paddocks, watering the grass that feeds the cows that produce the milk that makes the region rich. Continue reading.

Source: The Listener

Image: John Cowpland