Getting load average non-interactively

[Mayuresh <mayuresh%acm.org@localhost>]

I see two utilities, top and sysstat that show the information related to
system load.

I'd like to poll the load average non interactively (possibly to alert me
if a big build has got stuck).

I could get it by fooling top by overriding TERM variable and then
extracting info, something like
TERM="" top 2>/dev/null | head -1

What is a good way to achieve this on NetBSD?
Mayuresh.