The Naked Farmer lays bare rural mental health

THE Naked Farmer, a project designed to raise funds for mental health awareness in rural areas, has blossomed. Farmers nationwide are embracing the concept and are being snapped daily in their birthday suits.

Ben Brooksby, creator of The Naked Farmer, St Helens Plains, with underwear he sells and donates to charity. Picture: Dannika Bonser

BEN Brooksby has a naked ambition for agriculture.

“Personally I’ve gone through mental health issues and you see people in rural towns suffering from it as well and I want to do my bit to change those statistics,” says the 25-year-old farmer from St Helens Plains in western Victoria.

So Ben decided the best way to draw attention to a difficult subject was to bare body and soul through his fundraiser, The Naked Farmer project.

The idea started last year on social media, with 60,000 followers now on Instagram and a further 23,000 on Facebook, each day featuring a new contributed shot of farmers in their birthday suits, which saw the launch of a 2018 Naked Farmer calendar.

This year Ben has cranked up the concept further, in June launching his Naked Farmer brand underwear line, which he designed himself and that he hopes will “spark conversations”.

Late last month, Ben and his photographer mate Emma Cross began circumnavigating Australia to take photos of naked farmers who have all been touched by rural mental health issues, and who will feature in his 2019 Naked Farmer calendar.

The trip will also culminate in a book, digging a little deeper into his models’ stories.

And Ben is also hoping later this year to launch a series of mental health workshops in Horsham, which he hopes will then take off around Australia.

All money raised from The Naked Farmer goes to the Royal Flying Doctor’s mental health unit, including $3500 from the sell-out sale of his underwear line alone.

The Longerenong College graduate says the combination of unclad farmers highlighting rural mental health is a way to cut through a serious topic.

“It takes just as much guts to talk about mental health issues as it does to get your gear off,” he says.

“When I first had the idea I thought if you put a photo of a tractor on social media and talk about farming people will just scroll on, but if you put a naked photo they’ll stop, pay attention and learn.”

Remarkably, Ben hasn’t been short of volunteer models, with farmers from around Australia daily sending in naked pictures of themselves, with strategically placed hay bales or buckets, as well as farmers offering to pose for his calendar.

“It’s often the ones who struggle with self-confidence who benefit from it the most, who end up saying it’s one of the best things they’ve ever done and they don’t know what they were worried about,” Ben says. “It’s all about having the guts to do it.”

Guts is something Ben has plenty of; the cause is a very personal one and he freely discusses his lifelong battle with anxiety.

Growing up on the fifth generation sheep and cropping farm, he says after his parents separated some of his earliest memories were of battling the millennium drought.

“I remember I was about 10 walking through the back paddock and Dad saying it was the worst barley crop he’d ever seen — it only came above my ankles,” recalls Ben, who now manages the farm with his grandfather and father.

“Money was very tight and we battled through. It just makes me feel so sorry for those farmers now in Queensland, NSW and Western Australia who are battling drought.”

His childhood and teen years were underscored by anxiety, including social phobia and panic attacks, later diagnosed by his doctor who offered mindfulness and meditation practices.

His mental health went through the biggest test when in 2015 the family home burnt down, after mice chewed through the electrical wires of the hot water system.

“We were at a football game on the day and by the time I got back it was all destroyed,” Ben says.

“We lost everything. I only had a couple of my tennis racquets in my ute and the clothes I was wearing.’

Strangely enough, it was when his father gave him the role of supervising the rebuild that he overcame some of his greatest anxieties.

“I think by pushing myself out of my comfort zone I got more confidence. Just calling up carpenters and tilers would have once been difficult, but I had no choice, we needed a house.

“Now I feel 100 per cent in control. I still get nervous, like with media interviews, but that’s normal.”

Having surmounted his personal demons, Ben then took on the Naked Farmer challenge, determined to help others with theirs. He says the concept was an accidental one, started when he was harvesting a lentil crop last year.

“My mate Emma (Cross) loves harvest and comes here every year to stay and take photos,” Ben says.

“We were making a humorous naked calendar for friends and when I posted the photo of me with a well-placed lentil harvest, my friends had a good laugh.

“After that I knew I could do something useful with the idea. Mental health means a lot to me. I also lost an uncle to suicide.”

The 2018 Naked Farmer calender was quickly put together in November last year, selling nearly 200 to friends and family for $25 each.

This year the calendar is more organised, with responses coming from around Australia for people who want to take part in the project.

“We’re doing a group shot of 30 women in Western Australia, then up north to Broome to shoot a few stations, across to the Northern Territory and Mt Isa.”

Later in the year he and Emma will photograph farmers in Tasmania, Victoria and the Riverina.

Emma Cross says she has also battled depression and anxiety and believes it is important to speak about it.

“Growing up in country towns, I’ve seen the effects of mental health on communities, families, friends and some of the people closest to me,” Emma says.

“It’s a major issue in rural and remote areas and The Naked Farmer is putting this forward in a way that we can relate to.

“The project puts you out of your comfort zone, but once you’ve done it and had a go, there’s a positive outcome and feeling to what you’ve just done.”

Ben says the Naked Farmer is yet to officially be given charity status, but he guarantees every dollar goes to the RFDS, adding that he has personally covered all costs and “I’m a few thousand dollars down”.