Cyndi's Two Cents

Farmer suicide

Commentary:

In recent weeks, I’ve seen several disturbing reports about the high rate of farmer suicides in this country.  It’s heartbreaking. Depression and suicide are topics I’ve touched on several times in this column over the years and ones from which I have received much reader feedback.

A study from the University of Iowa earlier this year looked at suicide and homicide rates of farmers in the U.S. between 1992 and 2010.  Sadly, the number of suicides among farmers and farmworkers is much higher than that of people working in many other occupations.

When someone mentions farmer suicide, many of us immediately recall the farm crisis of the 1980’s.  More than 1,000 farmers took their own lives during those dark days of an economic crisis more severe than any since the Great Depression.

I graduated from high school in 1980.  Many of my friends who opted to join their family farm operations right after high school were starting college when I was wrapping up my time at the university.  Margins, if existent, were tight and there wasn’t room for the next generation on the family farm.  Thousands of multi-generational farms were lost to foreclosure.  Rural communities suffered along with the farmers who were a part of them.  Banks and local businesses, churches and schools felt the repercussions of the farm crisis.  Some wounds have never healed and might not as long as those who experienced the crisis are still alive.

I have friends whose farmer parents resorted to criminal activity to save their land.  I have a friend who discovered her father’s lifeless body where he had killed himself in the dairy barn after finishing the morning milking.  Another friend’s father drove a tractor into a pond on the family farm in an attempt to make it look like his suicide was an accident.

Although financial stress remains a root cause of suicide in 2017, there are other factors at play.  Perhaps too light-hearted a description for this very serious subject, but farming is not for sissies.  It can be hard physical labor.  Farmers might go days and weeks – sometimes months – without a decent night’s sleep or a day away from the farm.  Back-breaking work in extreme weather conditions can cause both physical and mental pain.

Many farmers work alone.  Many have poor access to quality health care. If it is available, affordable insurance that allows access to quality health care is not.

Farmers identify who they are by what they do.  It’s not “just a job.”  Growing a bumper crop is a personal win.  Having a crop destroyed by drought or flooding or some other weather extreme is a personal failure.

Life is rife with challenges for every person in this country.  Chronic illness, marital problems, raising children in a world where kidnappings, murder and terrorism are daily realities can be overwhelming.

I’m not a doctor so I would never try to diagnose any individual’s physical or mental health issues.  I hope that suffering from depression or experiencing an overwhelming sense of despair will reach out for help.

The National Suicide Prevention Lifeline is (800) 273-8255.

 

 

 

 

  • My parents lost our family farm in the early 90s, after years of financial stress through the 80s. When they were both 50, they filed ag bankruptcy and moved to the city to start over, both working for $5/hour.

    At age 76, my dad still laments the decisions he wishes he’d made differently. Within the past three weeks, after suffering a heart attack, he walked me through the financial nightmare that they endured while I was away at college and starting my own life. Three separate lawyers. The first one died. The third one developed cancer. Crazy twists and turns and risks. I’ve worried many times, even now, about the burden that he carries having lost the family farm.

    Mental illness, depression, is not something that we deal with well in this country, from the perspective of the shame that people often feel – like depression is weakness. It’s not. People need to understand that depression is an illness. Difficult situations, like the current ag environment, exacerbate depression. We need better health care for depression – in cities and in rural areas – and a better understanding of this illness.

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