Breaking down barriers with the Unbreakable Farmer, Warren Davies

“We made the decision that we couldn’t farm anymore… we were totally financially, physically and emotionally exhausted.” 

When Warren was given two options, stay on the farm or leave, it wasn’t just his “silent business partner”, Mother Nature he was trying to come to terms with, it was deteriorating mental health, financial stress and a fifth kid on the way.

Warren Davies is a farmer, farm manager and professional speaker. IMAGE CREDIT: Supplied

Warren was 15 when his family moved from the Eastern suburbs of Melbourne to Kyabram, but his love for farm life started when he was just three years old. 

“Mum’s uncle was a dairy farmer up in Tragowel… I reckon that’s where the seed was planted. And I always thought farming was about tractors, motorbikes and slug guns.”

Looking back, Warren understands this was a romanticised version of the truth, but he couldn’t have been happier to pack up his private boy school life and start fresh. 

“By the time I left that school, I hated school, and I was failing school. So to move to the country was fantastic.”

His parents were committed business people, running milk bars, butcher shops and post offices, but this meant Warren moved around a lot as a kid - often the “new kid on the block” struggling to find his place. When he reached high school, his parents enrolled him in a private boy school, and this was where he became the target of severe bullying and his previous love of school turned into dread and low grades. 

Warren speaks about his journey through life as a professional speaker. He is the “Unbreakable Farmer”, and has a mission to raise awareness around mental health, specifically in agriculture. 

Unpacking his life has led Warren to make realisations around his own struggles with anxiety and low self-esteem - and as a kid his way of dealing with these feelings was to push them under the rug, but these emotions all rose back to the surface when, later in life, his farm was facing harsh and unworkable weather conditions.  

After months of pushing on with little to no respite, Warren and his family walked away.

“As the furniture van drove over the bridge, and I shut the front gate on the farm -  because we couldn't sell the farm at that stage, we sold our cows - I symbolically unclipped my identity off myself and hooked it on the front gate, because that's who I believed I was, I was Warren the farmer and now I'd failed at that. And I was in a pretty shitty spot, even though we'd made all these decisions.” 

He owned his own farm at 22, bought his parents out of their land, managed properties all over the country and even now still jumps on the tractor when he finds farms that need workers - he really cares about the agriculture industry even if it has brought him some of his toughest challenges.

He owns his narrative, instead of letting it own him - and hopes talking candidly about the “failures” can lead more to do the same. 

There’s a lot more to learn about Warren’s story, so jump into this week's podcast.