Hello 911...Farmer Jim has gone mad with a gun and a bottle of whiskey! HELP.
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!
Farmers play an important role in the society, they are the ones indirectly serving food in our table. The government should meddle the issue and save/protect the farmers.
Farming is very costly and farmers income are less and bank loans are big . That's why they committed suicide .
It is the awesome topic to discuss.Thanks for sharing it
Bank loans are the main reason behind suicides of farmers in india
Wow! So upsetting to hear. So good to know. Thank you for raising awareness on this issue and others. I like these kinds of posts. Keep getting the word out Mr. Nutz!
On another note. I just spend 5 days in Belfast Ireland, now I'm in Prague Czech Rep, where I'll likely hang loose for a month or so.
Hope you are well :)
Wow that if it is an impressive news, farmers Suicidandose is something that seems to me little common, because they are relatively healthy people as you say I do not see what motives could have to do it and more when they are mostly the basis of their families
Middle men are the people who are making farmers job very tough.
Perhaps the farmers are simply mirroring what is happening to our land.
It probably is all those chemicals as you mentioned. What are the ages affected? Are the generational farmers? Could the problem go back as far as conception.
Scary news if the people feeding us don’t have the will to live.
Farmers are such an important part of the fabric of society. Here we have had a campaign being push for many years now to recognize the importance of farmers and all they provide. The government was scaling back land and raising taxes for some time that caused a huge stir. My in-laws are farmers and although they live a good life with money, the hours are massive and the stress of hoping for a bumper crop or even a successful crop at all can be overwhelming. In more recent years there have been concerns about the amount of rain in some places and less rain means less growth. There is also the struggle to compete with industrial farms. It is tough to match prices on your crops against a mass-produced crop. All that being said, it seems like a huge rise in the suicide numbers amongst a particular group. Definitely good to get eh conversation started and create awareness.
It is true that the peasants are the people of the world, they live in blossom, live in the flames. But I do not realize how hard they are to harvest crops. We all need values, they need to be respected. Though its mid class or lower class people. which gives or made us our food he like as a father.
I have given few lines of a poem
"I am a farmer of hardship, suffering from hardship.
The crop that is on the ground floor of the cultivated land causes its grain in the granule
I have my leg, my sweat.
From dawn to evening
Water sludge weed slaughter should be done."