- High Suicide Rate: U.S. farmers are 3.5 times more likely to die by suicide than the general population. In Utah, they die by suicide at the third-highest rate by vocation in the state.
- Temporary Help: A federal program offering Utah farmers free therapy was so successful that it ran out of money in four months. But lawmakers have chosen not to continue funding it.
- Stressors Facing Farmers: Farmers experience unique stressors, including fluctuating market prices, unpredictable weather and the expectation they handle mental health issues on their own.
Silly mormons who consistently vote for the conservative ticket getting exactly what they voted for instead of mental healthcare. Let the suicides fly.
/This is sarcasm. I have dealt with depression for most of my life. If you can’t read sarcasm in my tone, get off the internet.
They need money, not therapy! All that suicide shit comes from them being too poor, not because some city-drama.
The official vocation of farmer, in the US, is not a particularly hard laborer struggling for housing or food or healthcare. They are a property owner and employer dramatically underpaying the people who are actually dirt poor, particularly the labor underclass of immigrants. Accordingly they are frequently white supremacists.
But what is happening to them is that large companies are buying them out when “times get tough”, where the big company can weather financial storms more easily than individual “farmers” and can dictate things like prices via monopsony power, including dominating consortia that literally set prices if you want to sell certain crops through normal channels.
This is basically the story of scammy petty bourgeois car dealerships getting bought out by big companies. I am not particularly sympathetic to the small business tyrants that internalize their business failure so extremely. They knowingly hurt hundreds of people if not more during their “careers” and live off others’ labor.