Fresh UK data showing farmers’ mental wellbeing has fallen to its lowest level in four years is sharpening focus on a risk the insurance market has long struggled to quantify: the impact of stress, fatigue and isolation on farm safety and business resilience.
While mental health in agriculture is often framed as a wellbeing issue, brokers say its effects are increasingly surfacing as a material insurance risk, influencing accident exposure, liability claims and the resilience of farming businesses that depend on a small number of individuals operating in high-risk environments.
According to Oliver Burns, director at County Insurance Services, the human element of farm risk is still routinely undervalued during insurance discussions.
“We often spend a lot of time in renewal reviews or new business quotes going through assets, values etc and often clients undervalue the human aspect,” Burns said.
That gap matters because even well-run farms remain exposed to human error, he added.
“Even the safest working practices and most modern machinery are susceptible to human error derived from mental health concern,” he said. “Whether it’s poor, deteriorating, or has been neglected, it all contributes to greater risk factors on farm.”
The exposure is particularly acute in farming, where individuals frequently work alone with large, powerful machinery.
“If your client isn’t in a good place, and their piloting large, expensive machinery, alone on a field, any actuary or underwriter ordinarily would show concern,” Burns said.
For Burns, separating physical safety from mental wellbeing misses the point.
“A safe work force and a healthy workforce are you best line of defence from liability claims – one without the other is only half defending your business,” he said.
Evidence from the ground suggests that link between mental wellbeing and risk is already visible on farms.
Stephanie Berkeley, manager of the Farm Safety Foundation (Yellow Wellies), said research conducted by the charity over the past four years shows a direct correlation between poor mental wellbeing and unsafe working behaviour.
“Farmers that currently have lower levels of mental well-being have got attitudes [regarding] working safely that are very concerning,” Berkeley said.
Those attitudes translate into day-to-day safety failures, she added.
“Farmers that hold lower levels of mental well-being are less likely to be doing risk assessments, they admit to cutting corners, they admit to not wearing PPE and safety equipment and they do not think it's their responsibility to work safely,” she said.
The consequences of those behaviours are severe in an industry with one of the poorest safety records in the UK.
“When we talk about accidents on farms, these are not paper cuts,” Berkeley said. “They are very often life-changing accidents, and they are also life-ending.”
Even short lapses in concentration can have irreversible consequences.
“If you're not in the right head space when you're behind the wheel of a tractor, or for example, if you're dealing with livestock, if you're not concentrating, that momentary lapse of concentration can actually change your life forever,” she said.
For insurers, the challenge is that mental health risk rarely fits neatly into traditional farm risk assessments, which remain heavily focused on physical assets and formal processes.
Emma Slater, farming propositions manager at NFU Mutual, said mental health remains one of the least visible, but most consequential risk factors on farms.
“Mental health struggles, in turn, can lead to things like distraction or forgetfulness, which can have dangerous consequences in the context of farm work,” she said.
Back at the broker level, Burns said support does exist within some insurance products, but is often overlooked in practice.
“Helplines provided by directors & officers insurance or legal expenses really do help clients,” he said.
Too often, however, insurance conversations still prioritise physical assets over people.
“We can spend thousands on repairing machinery but I think we also need to consider the policyholder/insured themselves during it and really dig deep to find those helplines insurers provide,” he said.
Addressing people risk does not require turning insurance discussions into something abstract or uncomfortable, Burns added, but it does require asking different questions.
“We’ve just spent x hours talking about your assets, can we have five minutes to talk about how we’re protecting you?” he said.
As pressures on farming businesses intensify, brokers and insurers are being forced to confront a reality traditional risk models have struggled to accommodate. On farms, human resilience is inseparable from risk exposure, and the gap between operational reality and insurance framing is becoming harder to ignore.
