Farmers' suicides in the United States

Farmers' suicides in the United States
Part of suicide in the United States
Farmland in Hull, Iowa, one of the states experiencing high levels of suicide among farmers
LocationUnited States
TypeOngoing
CauseDebt, indignity, isolation

Farmers' suicides in the United States refers to the instances of American farmers taking their own lives, largely since the 1980s, partly due to their falling into debt, but as a larger mental-health crisis among U.S. agriculture workers. In the Midwest alone, over 1,500 farmers have taken their own lives since the 1980s. It mirrors a crisis happening globally: in Australia, a farmer dies by suicide every four days; in the United Kingdom, one farmer a week takes their own life, in France it is one every two days. More than 270,000 farmers have died by suicide since 1995 in India.[1][2]

Farmers are among the most likely to die by suicide, in comparison to other occupations, according to a study published in January 2020 by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).[3] Researchers at the University of Iowa found that farmers, and others in the agricultural trade, had the highest suicide rate of all occupations from 1992 to 2010, the years covered in a 2017 study.[3] The rate was 3.5 times that of the general population.[3] This echoed a study conducted the previous year by the CDC[4] and another undertaken by the National Rural Health Association (NRHA).[5]

Most family farmers seem to agree on what led to their plight: government policy. In the years after the New Deal, they say, the United States set a price floor for farmers, essentially ensuring they received a minimum wage for the crops they produced. But the government began rolling back this policy in the 1970s, and now the global market largely determines the price they get for their crops. Big farms can make do with lower prices for crops by increasing their scale; a few cents per gallon of cow's milk adds up if you have thousands of cows.

—Time, November 27, 2019

As of April 2023, the suicide rate within the farming community exceeds that of the general population by three and a half times.[5]

  1. ^ Cite error: The named reference guardian was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  2. ^ "Farmer suicides" – The Tribune India, November 1, 2021
  3. ^ a b c Sherman, Lucille (March 9, 2020). "Midwest farmers face a crisis. Hundreds are dying by suicide". USA TODAY. Retrieved July 2, 2024.
  4. ^ Cite error: The named reference nyt was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  5. ^ a b Williamson, Elizabeth (April 19, 2023). "A Death in Dairyland Spurs a Fight Against a Silent Killer". The New York Times. Loganville, Wisconsin. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved January 3, 2024.