Your working life can seriously impact your physical health and sense of wellbeing. It can also affect your personal life, how you socialise, eat and sleep. Therefore, your choice of job and how you work is of great importance. If you are unhappy with your current job and wish to have a change of career, then you need to carefully consider the many benefits of farming and rural positions. This type of work has so many job opportunities in which you can learn new skills and thrive.
Here we share 8 reasons why farming and agricultural work is good for both your physical and mental health.
1: You get regular daily exercise
Agricultural and farming jobs often involve a lot of manual type work that keeps you physically fit. Carrying farming stock and equipment is good for your muscles and bone health. You will also spend a lot of time walking, which is often one of the best forms of exercise you can do. Walking across the farmyard, or checking on your livestock several times a day, will keep your blood pumping, which in turn is great for your cardiovascular health, helping to reduce your chances of stroke, diabetes and high blood pressure. So, farming and agricultural jobs keep you fit and healthy.
2: Improve your sense of wellbeing
Being outdoors and looking after the earth, plants and animals has such a positive impact upon our mental health and sense of wellbeing. There has been much research on this subject and the NHS is now committed to forming and running health farms across the UK to boost mental health. So, working on a farm with animals, or tending to crops, will have huge effects on your sense of wellbeing. It will help to reduce stress and anxiety while boosting those happy hormones.
3: Hands-on work in the soil
There is something incredibly therapeutic about working with the soil and the land. Planting and digging crops and tending to the land is incredibly active and physical work, which in itself is rewarding, as you get to see the outcome of your hard work. But, working with the earth and soil also reaps other benefits for your mental health. This is because of the microbe mycobacterium vaccae, which is naturally found in the soil. Exposure to this microbe, as you tend to the soil, boosts the body's production of serotonin, the happy hormone. This helps to boost our mood and gives us a sense of fulfilment.
4: Mindfulness while working on the land
If you want to get away from that office job and all the tech that surrounds it, then doing a rural job is the way forward. This type of work makes you focus on the job at hand, whether it be raising sheep or cultivating crops. What you need to keep focused on is the set task, no matter the weather conditions. This is when mindfulness comes into play - the act of completely focusing on this task, and thinking about nothing else. This has proven to be beneficial for our mental health and self-worth.
5: Fresh air is good for you
Human beings are social creatures who crave to be outdoors. We are not meant to be stuck indoors for hours on end in air-conditioned rooms that are filled with artificial light. Our natural environment is outdoors, on the land, with plants and animals. When we are subjected to fresh air and natural sunlight, we feel good, and working in the rural farming or agricultural industry gives us instant and prolonged access to fresh air, albeit sometimes in the wind and rain, plus we are bathed in natural daylight. Working outdoors is good for our soul.
6: Working alongside like-minded people
When you choose to do a job within the agriculture sector, what you'll find is that you are surrounded by like-minded people. You will all be striving towards the same end goal and will probably share the same ethos. This is beneficial for building up your morale and sense of worth and purpose. When you work with others who share your belief system and love the job they are doing as much as you do, then you will gain so much satisfaction from your work and your chosen career.
7: You are making a contribution to society
Working within the world of agriculture is not only good for your own health, as it benefits the health and wellbeing of society as a whole. It doesn't matter if you are working in the lab looking at a soil analysis of the best-grown crops, or if you are working in the humane breeding of chickens, or if you are involved in the day to day running of a pig farm. Your actions and the decisions that you make will have a positive impact on the health and wellbeing of those people who use those services, as they will be receiving safe food of the highest quality.
8: Feeling that connection with the world
Working in agriculture and farming is a real hands-on job where you are part of the process that makes a contribution to the world we all live in. You'll have opportunities to talk to others in the industry to gain further insight into how your role impacts others. You'll be able to visit farms, see how the animals are cared for and even watch agricultural machinery in action. You'll understand the farm's role in providing food that ends up on our tables, and there is so much satisfaction to be gained from this and the connection with the wider world.
If you're looking for work in the agricultural sector, Agricultural Recruitment Specialists can help you find the right niche in the UK, Europe and beyond. We can assist in finding which doors are open for you with your specific background and even advice on what you could do to improve your prospects.
Agricultural Recruitment Specialists are worldwide recruitment experts in agricultural, food, farming and rural recruitment and have a variety of executive and management positions available within agriculture, horticulture and the food and rural sectors throughout the UK and the rest of the world. To find out more about our agricultural job vacancies and discuss your future career, contact our team of agricultural recruitment professionals. You can visit our website here: www.agriRS.co.uk or call our team on: 01905 345 155 or email us at: info@agriRS.co.uk
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