Calls to Farm Aid, an American non-profit which runs a helpline, surged by 109% year-on-year in 2018. By June this year, calls were up by another 30% on average
JUST AN HOUR from Madison, Wisconsin’s capital city, cows roam sloping hillsides and cornstalks line serpentine backroads. Loganville, a town of just 300 people, is farm country. But there are fewer farms than there used to be. Randy Roecker, a local dairy farmer, sometimes drives around counting the lucky few that are left. During the Great Recession, Mr Roecker worried about his own chances. Deep in debt, he contemplated suicide.
The Americans most likely to commit suicide, according to the CDC, are older, Native American and white men who live in rural areas. Most farmers fit that profile exactly. The most recent agricultural census found that 97% of “farm producers” are white or Native American, 64% are male and their average age is 57. Fully 34% are 65 or older.
Start with climate change. Farmers across the greater Midwest have seen myriad extreme weather events affect crop yields in the past few years: drought in the Dakotas, wildfires across the Great Plains and “false springs” in Wisconsin . In August, more than 10m acres of maize and soyabeans were damaged when a “derecho”—a series of thunderstorms with hurricane-force winds—tore through Iowa. Flooding is perhaps the most common blight.
Trade policy, too, is adding to the stress on farms. The Trump administration’s trade war with China dramatically curbed soyabean exports. Amy Rademaker, a rural-health expert at Carle Hospital in Urbana, Illinois says she has heard farmers fret more about trade in the past two years than ever before.
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