Apparently there is a new epidemic developing with America’s Heartland and the farming industry in general. According to recent research done by the Center for Disease Control, American farmers are committing suicide at an alarming rate never seen before in history. Now I rarely believe most of the propaganda that is spewed by the CDC or any other regulatory agency for that matter but, these new stats are hard to ignor and even harder to understand with the knowledge I have of farming and the lifestyle typical farmers are living. I hunt with many farmers in the winter and have many farmer friends I have known in Kansas and Nebraska over the years and they as a group seem to live an upper middle class lifestyle in the small towns where they do business. They seem to be happy, flush with money and live a very slow and wholesome life. They are family men, Christian and most of them I know are very well liked among other residents in small communities.
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.
Some people say the rising interest rates and the rigged markets that fix grain prices are to blame, some say it’s climate change, others attribute it to tariffs and the escalating trade war with other global nations. The farmers I know don’t seem to be affected that much by stagnation of grain prices because they are always driving shiny new Ford trucks and have late year and model tractors, stripper headers and implements along with the latest farming technology to assist them. Are they simply over extended with debt with all these new toys? I don’t think so, it’s seems this issue is something deeper and possibly man made.
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.
Stats like this make me wonder even more about things like chem trails, acid rain, over use of pesticides which may lead to some sort of mental disorder or chemical imbalance that farmers never had to endure before. The farmers I know say Monsanto is heavily in their business now and they are so powerful that farmers are forced to plant seeds and use growing techniques they don’t approve of. Now I only have a very small market sample of farmers in general that I know, but the only thing I ever see them all agree on is when it’s time to break out the Yetti 110 iced down and full of beer. What ever it is causing this we need to find out, because farming is an art, a way of life and our world is dependent on the people who get up at the roosters crow everyday to ensure that we all have something to eat.
If you know a farmer, ask they why they think this might be happening. Maybe we can find a solution and at the very minimum maybe we can alert farmers of America who don’t know this is a chronic problem to be more aware of things that might give them thighs of killing them selves and seeking help before it gets that far. I understand depression is a real thing and it’s hard to detect but, life seems to good to me when looking at my farmer friends to think one of them may be the next statistic on the CDC report. Thank a farmer today!