Kentucky farmers are the driving force behind the state’s $8 billion agriculture industry. But for some farmers, the stress and isolation of life on the farm can be overwhelming.
Between 2004 and 2017, there were109 documented cases of Kentucky farmers taking their own lives. According to research by the University of Kentucky, farmers are more than twice as likely to die by suicide than those in the general population. Farmers who are 64 years and older are at the highest risk.
For Kentucky farmers who oversee the nearly 70,000 farms across the commonwealth, factors including financial stress, a lack of access to mental health services, and the inability to get away from a job can contribute to mental health problems.
"24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year”
Tonya Cherry and her family own and operate Cherry Farms, on the border of Allen and Barren counties in southern Kentucky. A normal day for the Cherry’s begins with the sunrise and usually doesn’t end until well past dark.
Tonya Cherry said the success of their operation comes from these long days, which can sometimes stretch to 14 hours a day, with very few days off. It’s different from your standard day job.
“If you have a nine-to-five job, when you come home at 5:30, you really don’t have to think about your job until the next day,” Cherry said. “Farming is 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year, regardless.”
The Cherrys currently raise USDA-certified beef and pork. In the past, they’ve harvested tobacco, corn, and soybeans. They recently transitioned from a dairy farm to livestock, which was a difficult decision for the family, given their start as dairy farmers. The transition was necessary for the farm to survive, but that decision added to the family’s stress.
Cherry said there were always financial risks when making decisions related to crop harvest. For example, she said their farm could have taken a massive financial hit if they had not recouped their investment on tobacco they sold.
“Whenever we’d go to sell tobacco, you’d worked really hard, you borrowed money all year long, Cherry said. “We’d be out $100,000-$150,000 before we ever took it to sell it. There’s always stress in farming. There’s always a risk.”
But for all the misgivings that come with life on the farm, Tonya and her family also say they have an overwhelming sense of pride about what they do.
When you live where you work, it's hard to have work/life balance
But for some farmers, that pride can also prevent them from opening up about the stress of the profession, and the sense of isolation and depression that can sink in when you live and work on the farm and things seem inescapable. Tonya says it can sometimes be unbearable.
“Farmers are never going to tell you that something’s bad,” Cherry said. “They’re going to hold it in and sometimes they're not going to tell their family. They’re going to handle that themselves. I know that there are farmers who commit suicide and I understand that.”
Talking about anxiety and depression can be hard for anyone, but that seems especially true for members of the farming community who might not have access to mental health services due to living in more rural areas.
Kim Link, the Director of Rural Health at Western Kentucky University and a psychiatric nurse practitioner, said a prevailing mentality among many in the farming community is that you shouldn't talk about your problems or struggles. It’s a stigma that she said can lead to bigger issues.
“Farmers have some unique stressors that the general population may not have,” Link said. “They really have no work-life balance because they pretty much live where they work."
Link said her practice has seen a recent uptick in farmers seeking attention for mental health issues, something she said is encouraging. “In the practice here within Warren County we are getting a lot of referrals from outside counties and sometimes two of three counties over,” Link said. “So we are definitely seeing the need for people to get the help.”
But it also shows that more resources might be needed in rural areas where an entire county might only have one physician, according to Link.
“It’s good that people are getting services but we now just realizing that, ‘hey we need more people to help give these services,’” Link said.
Link and Tonya Cherry both point to a group that’s working to bring more accessible programs for physical and mental health to farmers and their families, a statewide coalition called Raising Hope.
Affecting more people in a positive way
Raising Hopebegan in 2019 by Susan Jones, a professor emeritus at Western Kentucky University, and Cheryl Witt, a healthcare provider and professor at the University of Louisville.
Jones said early conversations with farmers within the region revealed a majority had dealt with suicide. “It was in three counties, two in Kentucky and one in Tennessee, and over a third of those individuals had known someone who had died from suicide,” Jones said.
They started Raising Hope and began attending farmer's conventions across the state to provide health screenings and just generally listening and getting to know farmers. The group also passes out tokens of solidarity to farmers to let them know they are seen and appreciated. Since its start, the organization has grown to over a dozen staff members and began receiving state funding through the Kentucky Department of Agriculture.
Kentucky Agriculture Commissioner Jonathan Shell said in the short time the organization has been around they’ve created a positive impact in Kentucky agriculture.
“Mental health in agriculture and farmers is really sensitive, so the main thing with Raising Hope is just being able to communicate and talk about mental health issues,” Shell said. “At the Department of Agriculture, we house Raising Hope and it's something we’re trying to professionalize so that we can get into more places and affect more people in a positive way.”
The group has created a public awareness campaign and started a program to train community members who interact with farmers most often on what a mental health crisis looks like. They also started mental health assistance and financial services for farmers through the 988 phone line. The group says it's helped dozens of farmers reach life-saving mental health services.
Jones said that while the stigma surrounding mental health still exists, the group’s efforts to reach farmers are starting to create meaningful change.
“I had one gentleman when I interviewed him said, 'It was not until the health care provider leaned forward and said ‘what else is going on with you,' and he said the way he said it tore the dam down and all the emotions came out.”
Tonya Cherry said her family has used the group's free health screenings, received flu shots, and spoken to, and assisted, members of Raising Hope. She knows others in the farming community who have as well. Cherry said it was a personal message after a particularly hard decision that made the biggest impact.
“One of the ladies with Raising Hope sent me a Facebook message, ‘Hey, hang in there. I know it can be tough,’ and I was just like, ‘Wow.’ That just meant a whole lot that she reached out,” Cherry said.
To some, a message over social media might not seem like much. But for Cherry, knowing that she and her family weren’t alone on the farm gave her hope.
