HARRISONBURG, Va. (WHSV) – The Virginia Farm Bureau is raising awareness of the mental health struggles faced by young farmers and farm youth. It said youth are not immune to the stressors faced by older farmers.
“A lot of times on farms when you have the younger generation, they’re helping with day-to-day as well, so if that’s helping attend to animals, if it’s helping to run machinery or equipment, kind of making all those pieces work, they feel a lot of the same stress that their parents and family members do,” said Dana Fisher, Safety Program Coordinator for the Virginia Farm Bureau. “One of the benefits of growing up on a farm is that you have an earlier understanding of how that business works and how that operation works, but also it adds that stress to it as well.”
Research statistics show that on average farmers experience worse mental health than the general population. Studies have indicated farmers have higher rates of depression and anxiety in large part due to farm production stressors. These stressors include things like uncontrollable weather and the financial stress of up-and-down markets.
“Unfortunately farmers don’t get a chance to set their own prices. It’s just whatever the market will hold, and all of those things kind of come into play and add stress on the family in general,” said Fisher.
For younger people taking over family farmers that have been run for generations, there can be an added level of stress.
“You don’t leave it at the end of the day. A lot of folks are still living there, so it makes it easy to kind of continue to work on it. You also have to maintain it because that’s where folks are living and maybe your parents or grandparents or even great-grandparents are living on that farm and piece of property as well; the stress of maintaining it is tough,” said Fisher.
For younger people who want to farm but don’t have a family farm the biggest challenge is simply finding land.
“The hard part is really just getting into it and finding available land and available resources. We see in our area that it is getting harder and harder to get that land; it’s getting harder and harder to find places to farm. We see a lot of stress and pressure from development,” said Fisher. “I think there are a lot of people that are interested in it and who want to do it but finding those resources makes it really hard.”
Fisher said that the most important thing for any farmer of any age struggling with their mental health is to not be afraid to ask for help.
“Seeking that counsel, wherever that may lay, is I think one of the key things. Unfortunately, too many times folks just hold on to that themselves and try to figure it out themselves or internalize that issue when seeking that advice is always the best option,” he said.
Fortunately, there are now more mental health resources available to farmers than ever before, like the mental health helpline that was launched last year. The Rockingham County Extension Office of the Farm Bureau also works to provide farmers with a helping hand.
“Our extension and a lot of other partners have worked on the Progressive Agriculture Safety Day, that farm safety day that is traditionally held in March at the fairgrounds. It’s a great event, they’ve expanded that to go beyond just technical pieces of safety to also mental and physical health too,” said Fisher.
Other stressors for farm youth include the pressure to carry on farming traditions and a lack of extracurricular activities due to farm responsibilities.
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