Farm Worker
April 27, 2018
Pain Management
May 24, 2018
Food Chain Radio Show #1148
Michael Olson, Author & Urban Farming Agriculturalist
Farmer Suicide
A Most Ominous Trend
Guest: Dr. Mike Rosmann –Farmer, Harlan IO & Psychologist, Ag Behavior Health
It’s extremely ominous when the people who provide us with the staff of life, are taking their own life, and are doing so in record numbers.
Michael Olson Food Chain Radio –Why are farmers committing suicide at an alarming rate?
In fact, the Center for Disease Control and Prevention found that people working in agriculture take their lives at a rate higher than any other occupation.
The CDC data suggested that the suicide rate for agriculture workers in 17 states is nearly 500 percent greater than the general population. And, Newsweek followed up by claiming the suicide death rate for farmers is nearly twice that of military veterans. Some very close to farmers say the rate could be much greater, as many farmers disguise their suicide as an accident.
But it’s not just happening in the USA, it’s happening most everywhere. In Australia a farmer commits suicide every 4 days. In the UK, one farmer every week takes his or her own life. In India, more than 270,000 have died by suicide since 1995.
Given this carnage among the people who grow our food, we simply must pause to ask…
Leave a comment below: Why are our farmers taking their lives in record numbers?
Nationally syndicated Food Chain Radio airs live Saturday mornings 9-10AM Pacific.
5 Comments
Farmers are in debt, their crops fail and big ag seems to be taking all the profits, Why would you not?
Agriclture is an extremely dangerous and physically demanding occupation…like forestry, fishing or mining. It’s a huge drain on resources…subsisdies or not. Yet it pays poorly…hampering most dreams that most other people take for granted. Capital tied up in land is often all that farmers have…but if they are borrowed big, they are owned by the banks…there is no way out of the hole. Even for subsidy farmers – their revenue has crashed. Specialty farmers are seeing markets and margins vanish. There is essentially no way to make it financially- even for those who want to….Sadly the truth about suicide is that for family – their suicide may be their only way to get their family out of debt. In the mid- 19th century farming was considered the best pathway to middle class prosperity. But after industrialization – that became the path to middle class properity…now that has vanished too. Generations of ‘cheap food’ policies have convinced people that food must be cheap…Yet, like teaching there is very little value given to such culturally significant occupations.
Sad to see this continuing when there is such hope if only the public could be better informed as I explain in this recent talk to progressive farmers in Kansas https://www.savory.global/uncensored/fate-city-based-civilization-hands-farmers/
I voted “Too much stress.” There is the economic stress of balancing the books and dealing with Big Ag and USDA, but I think a major factor is the physiological stress of being exposed to organophosphates, pesticides, and GMO’s on a daily basis. Cesar Chavez, for all his socialist leanings, was right in this, that migrant farm workers were being exposed to deadly chemicals — but that was okay because those sundry Brown people were expendable. Aplastic anemia, leukemia, cancers are not suicide, but still incapacitating and deadly. And riddle me this — what studies have been done on the synergistic effect of anti-depressant meds (which stressed farmers may be depending on) and above-mentioned chemicals? Is it possible they create a perfect storm of death? I would like to see stats on ORGANIC farmers and suicide, and if this horrific trend is not specific to those farmers dealing with conventional methods of farming.
In American, its the vertical integration of the agricultural industry. Where is the hope when you have dug your financial hole and greedy commodity interests, expensive farming practices and outright land grabbing is the lay of the land? The farming structure in the US is fundamentally flawed.