Farmers in America are killing themselves in staggering numbers

CBS News

“Think about trying to live today on the income you had 15 years ago.” That’s how agriculture expert Chris Hurt describes the plight facing U.S. farmers today.

The unequal economy that’s emerged over the past decade, combined with patchy access to health care in rural areas, have had a severe impact on the people growing America’s food. Recent data shows just how much. Farmers are dying by suicide at a higher rate than any other occupational group, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.   

The suicide rate in the field of farming, fishing and forestry is 84.5 per 100,000 people—more than five times that of the population as a whole. That’s even as the nation overall has seen an increase in suicide rates over the last 30 years.

The CDC study comes with a few caveats. It looked at workers over 17 different states, but it left out some major agricultural states, like Iowa. And the occupational category that includes these workers includes small numbers of workers from related occupational groups, like fishing and forestry. (However, agricultural workers make up the vast majority of the “farming, fishing and forestry” occupational group.)

However, the figures in the CDC study mirror other recent findings. Rates of suicide have risen fastest, and are highest, in rural areas, the CDC found in a different study released earlier this month. Other countries have seen this issue, too–including India, where 60,000 farmer suicides have been linked to climate change.

In the U.S., several longtime farm advocates say today’s crisis mirrors one that happened in the 1980s, when many U.S. farmers struggled economically, with an accompanying spike in farmer suicides.

“The farm crisis was so bad, there was a terrible outbreak of suicide and depression,” said Jennifer Fahy, communications director with Farm Aid, a group founded in 1985 that advocates for farmers. Today, she said, “I think it’s actually worse.”

“We’re hearing from farmers on our hotline that farmer stress is extremely high,” Fahy said. “Every time there’s more uncertainty around issues around the farm economy is another day of phones ringing off the hook.”

Finances are a major reason. Since 2013, farm income has been dropping steadily, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. This year, the average farm’s income is projected to be 35 percent below its 2013 level

“The current incomes we’ve seen for the last three years … have been about like farm incomes from early in this century,” said Hurt, a professor of agricultural economics at Purdue University in Indiana.

Farmers are also at the mercy of elements outside their direct control, from extreme weather events that threaten crops to commodity prices that offer less for farm goods than it costs to produce them.

“We’ve spoken to dairy farmers who are losing money on every pound of milk they sell,” said Alana Knudson, co-director of the Walsh Center for Rural Health Analysis with the University of Chicago.

As America’s trading partners slap tariffs on U.S. crops, those prices are set to be further undermined. Meanwhile, the Federal Reserve’s gradual raising of interest rates threatens the financing for many smaller farms.

A lot of our farmers take out operating loans so they can buy seed, fertilizer and spray. As we’re looking at increasing interest rates, this is going to exacerbate financial vulnerability,” Knudson said.

Unreliable finances are a major reason why three-quarters of farmers must rely on non-farm income, often from a second job. Health insurance access is another.

Health care and mental-health services can be critical, Knudson said, particularly in rural areas, where medical care may be scarce. The farm bill that passed the House last week threatens to undo that, she said, because it allows for health insurance to sell plans that exclude mental health coverage. The Senate version of the farm bill allocates $20 million to a program to connect farmers with behavioral health services.

Such programs are even more crucial today, said Fahy, because many publicly-funded programs that were created in the wake of the 1980s farm crisis have been chipped away over the years. She pointed to Minnesota, where a suicide hotline closed earlier this month after a budget dispute between the legislature and the governor.

“Farmer stress right now is extremely high, the farm economy is very precarious and not predicted to improve in the near future,” she said. However, she added, “When there are steps in place to address the root cause, which is usually financial and legal, the stress becomes manageable.”

Because people can feel stigma around issues of mental health, conversation is important, said Doug Samuel, associate psychology professor at Purdue University.

“When you’re looking at someone who you have a concern about,” Samuel advised, “don’t be afraid to ask, don’t be afraid to listen.”

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/american-farmers-rising-suicide-rates-plummeting-incomes/

16 thoughts on “Farmers in America are killing themselves in staggering numbers

  1. Let’s see…the family farmers produce crops that sell for a loss to a jew broker that marks it way up and sells it to a jew packing house that marks it up and sells it to a jew distributor that marks it up and sells it to a grocer.
    They produce nothing, they add no value yet make a profit at the expenses of the family farmers and you, the consumer. Was the Reich wrong?

  2. I recommend everyone sell their house and get out of the U.S. while it’s still possible. The Bible warns at least 8 times to flee Daughter of Babylon ‘lest you partake of her plagues.’ Join/form an intentional community and just get out. We only have another 6 years until the Second Coming. These are the Last Days. The Tribulation began 9/23/17, to last exactly 7 years. U.S. will be gone before the middle of this period. Find a place to go that is remote, where you can subsist, and pray and wait for Jesus to come. Those who make it through to the end without selling out, will be translated and never die. I think that’s really a wonderful thing to hope for. But we do have to make it through to the very end, which is when Jesus comes back. He’s only coming once, and it will be at the end.

    1. 2Pe_3:9 The Lord is not slack concerning his promise, as some men count slackness; but is longsuffering to us-ward, not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance.

  3. A quote from 50 years past:
    When you see that trading is done, not by consent, but by compulsion – when you see that in order to produce, you need to obtain permission from men who produce nothing – when you see that money is flowing to those who deal, not in goods, but in favors – when you see that men get richer by graft and by pull than work, and your laws don’t protect you against them, but protect them against you – when you see corruption being rewarded and honesty becoming a self-sacrifice – you may know that your society is doomed. Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged

  4. Gut-wrenching, sad. “Killing themselves in staggering numbers.”

    Is it a sickness of depression? A sickness of defeatism? Backed into a corner? Can’t provide for their families/make a decent living? All of the above.

    If only they got angry instead instead of killing themselves. I mean if their anger could have been a springboard to confront the monster of creeping communism. How many more hard-workers and industries will be taken down ’cause being a slave in too damn painful?!!

    Anger as springboard!!

    🙁

    .

  5. Read the book “None Dare Call it Treason, 25 Years Later.” It is a REAL big eyeopener as to how the agriculture in the US is CONTROLLED, the fed sets the price on all goods yearly which impoverished small farmers allowing the mega-corp to take over, this is all thanks to that jew traitor FDR who brought this system into motion.

  6. One big problem Galen, ones like Mark Koernke keep saying to “hold back! It aint time yet! Let the enemy get the first swing on us in the war so WE are justified!” The end result is higher suicide to anyone who listens to this because rather than lash out and take the bastards down with them they wind up just stewing till it becomes unbearable. We are all guilty of this and need to break ourselves out of it, that farmers only options are suicide, revenge killing or live in a cardboard box with his family, FOREVER. I grew up on a small farm, I know, its gone now.

    I have no solution except to say that if it knocks on your door dont do what Mark says but to swing hard and fast for there wont BE a “next time.”

    1. Thank you, Vekar. I read a bit of Quigley. I hope to be true to my instincts.

      The fight takes its toll. Sometimes it feels like I’m turning into a man because so much masculine energy is needed to keep confronting. So the feminine side is not given enough time, the side that just wants to nurture others, provide meals for family, offer the softer touch in traditional ways. And to even talk about the toll on one’s self brings in guilt of possibly not being strong enough.

      I guess it’s just human nature to self-examine, to sometimes question and doubt, and then to want to do better. I do know how to pick up a chair.

      I’ll just add that farmers are champions, the guardians of our continuance, so if we know any “farmers” who show signs of struggle, it would be good to reach out and be a friend. In some ways, we are all farmers, wanting our land, control of our crops, the benefit of the fruits of our labor, and to live life in a way that fulfills us.

      Thank God the bar has been set and we know where to reach: Bill of Rights = The Way Out = The Return To Human Decency.

      .

      1. It will be one bloody and mean ass battle to get there though, but well worth it. Just remember: dont do things by halves like the revolutionaries did, we have to go ALL the way this time, no stopping till the slate is clean.

  7. Many truckers have become farmers, goes hand in hand.. Trucking regulations have become too harsh.

  8. Along with farming goes bee-keeping. We used to be bee-keepers until the bees started disappearing, lands changed hands and we got locked out of our bee forage-and-beehive areas (because ranchers couldn’t make it ranching anymore so they sold their lands to what are now frackers), and in 1997 (or about every 14 years) the drought is so severe the bee forage dies (whitebrush and the rest of the bee forage)–and now with geoengineering it’s even more unpredictible and drought-likely. As for fishing, I can think of certain plastic-bottler water outfits and a certain Japanese electro-company that messed that up big time… MonSATAN has a lot of allies here, and lots of blood to drink… 🙁

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