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Comment by ealhad | Hacker News Reader

If farmers are “sacred”, how do you explain their horrible suicide rate?

There are a lot of problems with the french agro-food industry; but I wouldn't blame farmers alone.

> If farmers are “sacred”, how do you explain their horrible suicide rate?

There's no contradiction between the two? The suicide rate of farmers is a little above average, probably because, in spite of all the subsidies and advantages, they still have a very hard time making a living.

But farmers are still sacred in the sense that it's impossible to suggest that maybe the current state of affairs is suboptimal, or to have a serious public conversation about that policy.

"horrible" is going a bit too far? It is 20% higher than average. http://www.lepoint.fr/sante/en-france-les-agriculteurs-se-su...

Considering we are talking about people killing themselves, I don’t think so.

Yes any suicide rate would be horrible.

A suicide rate 20% higher than another suicide rate is 20% more horrible, which is not horribly more horrible unless we've diluted the meaning of horrible which would mean the we don't think the suicide rate is too bad.

Suicide is normally a preventable death, and suicide is a leading cause of death. So if a population has 20% higher than average rate of death by suicide that's a pretty big deal.

Is that measured in suicide attempts, or successful suicides? Because if it's successful suicides it might just be that the number of attempts is the same, but they have more effective methods of killing themselves, like pesticides:

https://80000hours.org/2018/03/leah-utyasheva-pesticide-suic...

(I know Sri Lanka isn't France, and we cannot assume anything about French pesticide laws. I'm just offering another possibility)

That’s a good question, and an interesting point.

(though I think they mostly hang themselves)

Don't know about France but a definite problem in Ireland is that farming is 7 days a week 365 days a year job for many farmers and for those with a small holding making a living can be difficult. Add to the closing of rural pubs/post offices/shops social isolation is a real problem.

Question from someone who knows nothing about this and is trying to understand: how much of agriculture in France is dominated by big agriculture? Is it possible that small farmers are having a hard time while economics of scale and subsidies work well for big ag?

Not knowing that much either, but I was more under the inpression that farmers working small had a better chance to live decently than the ones working on big contracts.

My perspective is how supermaket chains establish almost direct relations with producers and waive their weigh around to get better and better deals as time goes. Basically a variant of cuting the middle layers to eliminate bargaining power.

Yup. And that is how farmers find themselves with huge debts, because they are strongly advised by companies to buy big machines.

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