What is driving the high suicide rate among farmers? (2022)
news.illinois.edu
news.illinois.edu
Almost impossible to buy your way into farming as an individual business strategy (10k/acre in the midwest, need ~500 acres to support a family).
So chances are if you farm your parents, grandparents, great-grandparents, etc. did to. There's immense pressure on each generation to not be the one that lets the family legacy die.
Our fields are named after the previous families that owned them. Most failed because someone died unexpectedly without putting their land in a trust, or the next generation simply doesn't want to farm (for good reason).
Those that do survive are very game of thrones. "That field belongs to the Dicksons, that one is the Hoechs - they have 2 sons working with them now". Land auctions/purchases go through a lot of backroom dealing where patriarchs from various families horse trade. It's a very interesting subculture of the midwest.
Meanwhile I'm changing some text for an A/B test and posting on HN and making bank.
Not sure what my point is here, other than this just feels wrong in some respect.
(<<insert a text that counters the usual objections by pointing out that you're taking an integral over society, so lots of people paying little individually still adds up to a huge number>>)
This explanation is elegant. There's nothing obviously wrong with it, and I challenge you to find an alternative that's at least as fair, and that can actually work with real humans in real life.
And yet, decade by decade, it's becoming blindingly clear that this system is totally bonkers, and allocates rewards pretty much exactly backwards. It's like, holy shit, how much worse does it have to get before some philosophers or economists or mathematicians figure out a viable alternative that ranks occupations correctly?
That injustice stems from a system that we cannot meaningfully change, though. Our cages are larger and more comfortable, but people making 6-7 figures are not policymakers or influential voices.
Having realized that, are you ready to walk away from Omelas today?
I have no idea how to work in programming, and the environnement that is shown (non stop meetings, pointless hours of work wasted, weeks of crunch) is very very unattractive to me.
I think it's just too weird still - unless you had an oportunity fall onto your lap to learn it, or went into CS in school, I doubt most see a way in or are not interested in the work environnement.
Others are, "do it because you have no other options" jobs. Low-level construction and farming falls into that. Keep in mind that, historically speaking, large-scale farming has been done by the lowest rung of society. Kids fleeing the farms to the city in search of wealth and opportunity is a tale as old as civilization.
It feels wrong because it is wrong on some level - but the flip side, good wages for these workers makes food less affordable for people, causing another kind of suffering. However, the solution to the human suffering component of these jobs (automation) also destroys all competition except the top rungs of the industry.
If this were an easy problem to solve, humans wouldn't have so many different philosophies on dealing with this.
Throughout we have various forms of serfdom/slavery/etc. when there's not enough war.
Then we have colonialism, or in Joseph Conrad's words "civilized pillaging and raping."
Today we have capitalism, or just colonialism without the raping.
Monkey see, monkey want, monkey kill and brutalize to get.
If animals could make full use of their environments, I'm sure they would be greedy too. It's just an innate part of living things.
Things really haven't changed at all.
And the personality that farming attracts... it would literally destroy my Dad to fail at something he set out to do.
There was a rumor that my grandfather killed himself. He had car trouble, and had crawled under the car to fix it. But somehow the jack slipped, and the car pushed a screwdriver into his heart as it fell.
He was alone about 5 miles from the home place -- on a road where someone other than his family would find him.
He was in his 70s... old for ranchers in the 1960s. Old for ranchers today. Bills were due, and his sons were all drafted into the military.
But... once he died, 2 of his sons were able to get out of military service in order to come home and help take care of the ranch. Not everyone made it back, but those 2 did.
And the life insurance paid off a lot of their debts that they had no other way of paying. (So now he's got a pasture named after him!)
Anyway it's always been a hard life. They don't need a shrink, they need things to be just a little more fair. They don't need huge wins, but they need the ability to provide for the ones they love.
Bankers, and re-sellers make money. Ranchers and farmers do not. It's a rigged system.
In Saskatchewan its $2K/acre and you need ~2500. Probably not a coincidence that it works out about the same...
Can anyone explain to me why farmland in developed countries is so expensive? It sounds like a terrible investment to buy it at such prices, and yet somebody's doing it.
When you consider the people doing the buying are at scale (thousands of acres) and can spread the cost of very expensive equipment over many acres it starts to make sense. The marginal cost of farming another 80 acres in terms of time and equipment is quite low.
Our neck of the woods in the 70s used to have 25 farms where now 1 family farms the entirety. If you're good at what you do (to the degree you can control), you'll survive and keep growing.
Biggest issues are your kids getting taxed to oblivion on land they inherit (this kills the farm) and outside investors bidding land way above where it reasonably cashflows because it's "cheap".
But don't feel bad for farmers. To inherit $10 million+ in land because your family's had it 100 years is a blessing most people don't get in life.
https://www.nass.usda.gov/Charts_and_Maps/Field_Crops/cornyl...
... I still think this is pretty sad. I married into family involved with farming and seeing this dilemma is not heartening. One of my in-laws is currently in farming proto-retirement (renting out land now and not actively farming), and I can vividly see how selling out is basically not an option for him. If you spend a lifetime cultivating practices of living modestly and working towards the ideal of the small family farm, a big pile of money:
1) does not interest you very much, since you've built your life around hobbies like going to the bar and socializing with a dwindling crowd of other people who have your lifestyle. Nouveau rich family farmers seldom seem to do much better with a windfall than lottery winners.
2) further, selling out really is the antithesis to what you spent your life doing. Basically you're saying that your lifestyle has outlived it's usefulness in the spirit of "Death of a Salesman" is worth more dead than alive.
I'm probably being overly harsh sounding because I'm not an expert and I've been exposed to the idealist perspective in person quite a bit. But I do have pity for those who have been put in a hard place when they are suddenly surrounded by "game of thrones" and skepticism that massive consolidation will work out well in the long run.
edit: and yeah, I get that adapting is also an option but by definition it's an option for increasingly few.
How much is the inheritance tax?
The rest would vary state by state and depend on the relation to the deceased, but I'm pretty sure it'd be $0 or negligible in most cases, on a $10m estate, for spouse or children at least, even with minimal advance preparation.
But the general strategy today is set up a generation skipping trust so that in the event the gov't decides to enact strict step up basis laws it doesn't blow the whole thing up.
It just increases the isolation of Farmers and other rural people. Strong Towns actually has a stated goal of reducing the interstate system! (Strong Towns, weak country, should be their new name.)
We need to reverse this trend - more people back into tiny cities, and yes, even suburbs.
Sure, looked at only from a money point of view, cities do a lot - but it's all services, and very little actual good people need in order to live. There's more to a strong country than just money.
No no. It's all working to plan. Consolidation leads to bigger, more efficient farms. Or so the big land owners think... That much land requires ever more sophisticated technology, which big corporations are happy to provide and make people dependent on, all while collecting farm level data to allow someone to play the futures markets.
There is a pecking order. Whom do you serve and to what end?
And now I've reached my cynical threshold for the day and need to unplug and go outside ;-)
If you sell a commodity and your competitors are far more efficient, you will lose in the end. Change the commodity from wheat to mining silver and nobody has their heartstrings pulled for you.
Ultimately people aren’t siding with family farms for economics or fairness reasons - they are doing it to support the losing underdog or anti-modernism nostalgia.
Farms also shape rural communities, literally and figuratively.
>Ultimately people aren’t siding with family farms for economics or fairness reasons
What would you call Community supported Agriculture? (https://www.kneehighfarm.com/what-is-csa)the farm to table movement? Farmers markets?
Meaning it's a perishable good, it's a different market. It's good to have a lot of small farms to not have monopolies and as a stopgap to massive crop failures/blight or just bad management.
Like corn: the existence of extra corn (currently making ethanol) to turn into food in case of emergency/war, so it's subsidized.
Meaning no one has a personal reason to care about the plight of a silver mine
Similarly I don’t care if it is a 5 acre family farm or a 100k acre corporation that supplies the corn I eat.
Efficiency creates fragile systems.
Is anyone here old enough to remember that telecoms were a plurality? Now they are consolidated into a few, or couple, I haven't checked lately. When they wanted to merge or buyout it used to be big news and regularly got denied to protect the market. But the last few monumental mergers have largely gone under the radar, a series of boxes checked and completed forms, and they're done. It's because people friendly to the entities are in the positions of decision.
We know capitalism has flaws and is imperfect. It used to be our regulatory agencies would tell companies like Monsanto to take a hike. But now, they permit anything the corporations want to do. With that glaring of a problem, are we really talking about an economic framework called "capitalism"? No, we're not.
Were this a Communist country then the oligarchs would be friendly to the regulatory agencies. Same issue, different economic foundation. Do you see where the problem lies now? It's not "capitalism". That's a nonsensical critique parroted by consuming inflammatory rhetoric, a waltz down the sidewalk of extremism from hateful social and news spaces online. Stop it, please.
Family farming has always depended on cheap/free labor of children (and slaves / serfs / indentured servants / illegal immigrants). Corporate farming at least makes those transactions more honest and transparent.
the only thing they do is obfuscate the particular human individuals exploiting the workers.
Farming associations actually help here, since they can negociate like a union, but not sure how much the US would approve of this "communism".
Isolation (rural, children leave), low or fluctuating profits (price of diesel, fertilizer, feed etc), high stress and working hours, disconnection and exploitation (industrial seed and fertilizer, predatory distributors or suppliers) in some practices. Not an easy profession or way of life unless it is a hobby.
things are not going well.
The other issue is stress, family farmers are now competing directly with foreign government and hedge fund backed corporate farms, so it's almost impossible to compete when they can just write off losses. And getting squeezed by monopolies for seed production and selling to monopolies for meat processing and grain buying. Many are working on land owned for generations and feel the pressure to not fail, I know several who became alcoholics as a result of having to sell their land after going broke, you can tell they feel a lot of shame over it due to their identity being so tied to what they do
Right, how much of this is explained simply by what we'd expect to see in a population of older men with a ~100% rate of easy access to firearms, compared with the rate of easy access in the general population of folks otherwise fitting that demographic?
[EDIT] For those not familiar with these kinds of areas, this isn't because farmers are especially likely to be "gun nuts" (maybe they are? I kinda doubt it though, probably not at a rate much higher than the general population, anyway) but because hunting and recreational shooting are more popular in rural areas (citation needed, but I'd be very surprised if that's not true) and because even farmers who don't engage in those hobbies tend to have one or more firearms for varmint control, protection from dangerous animals, or simply because they inherited or were gifted some, if nothing else. I'd expect that nearly 100% of US farmers could have a loaded firearm in-hand within an hour, if they wanted to, without having to put much thought into how to get it.
30% of US adults own a gun and another 11% live with someone who does.
39% of all men own a gun. 46% of all adults in rural areas own guns. 48% of white men own a gun.
Sure, those numbers drop a lot in the cities and heavily Democrat voting areas, but it's pretty easy to get a gun in those places, legally or not.
More than ownership or access, I think this is a mindset issue -- same as why rural areas have high rates of ownership and access to firearms, but don't experience the violent crime rates found in cities. It's not the guns, it's who has the guns.
You may be surprised about that, actually. Cities often make headlines or rankings under things like "Xth most violent US city" with some implicit assumption behind it that larger cities are more violent than rural areas, towns, or smaller cities under whatever threshold is being used in that analysis, but that's not actually true. Absolute numbers are high in big cities (they're denser—duh) but rates may surprise you.
[EDIT] This is a shitty site, but it's the general kind of thing you can expect to find, if you dig into this:
https://www.police1.com/ambush/articles/10-us-counties-with-...
Highest-murder-rate counties yields about 60/40 small cities or rural, and the usual suspects for violent big cities (Baltimore, DC, STL, New Orleans—notably absent: Chicago, NYC, LA)
You'll see similar results for crime in general. Most big US cities aren't remarkably-horrible dens of crime—not relative to small cities and rural counties, anyway, and not when looking at the per-capita rate and including those lower-pop areas. The safer half or so of large US cities are safer than large swaths of rural and small-town/city America. Big-city doesn't necessarily equal higher crime, violence, or murder rate than small cities and rural counties. It only seems that way because, for some reason, crime in cities is usually highlighted and presented in ways that suggest that's true.
As a general statement, cities have much higher homicide rates than the suburbs, exurbs and rural areas.
If you zoom out too far, then the violent cities blend in with the less violent suburbs. For example, from the article you linked:
"From a county-based per capita county perspective, however, Cook County, Illinois had a lower homicide rate than many other counties in the United States. Between 2009 and 2015 there were 11 murders per 100,000 residents in Cook County."
That is about half of what the homicide rate was in the city of Chicago (the seat of Cook Co), so you can see that distortion when you're comparing counties rather than cities.
And since Chicago is in the news so often, let's use that as an anecdote: Chicago's homicide rate is more than 4x the national average, but it's _less than half_ of cities like Baltimore, Detroit, St Louis, New Orleans and Baton Rouge.
As a counter-example, NYC has a lower homicide rate than the US overall. This is awesome and a welcome change from the violence we saw in the 70s, 80s and early 90s. But NYC is also five counties, so you can see some real swings in crime rates from New York County to Bronx County, from Kings County to Richmond County, all in the same city.
Chicago's homicide rate is also very unevenly distributed, with about a half dozen or so neighborhoods accounting for the majority of homicides. This is true in many cities, which is why we want to zoom in rather than zoom out.
Are there violent rural areas? Of course. But I would be careful looking at rural, sparsely populated counties as counter-examples: the link you gave cited Coahoma Co, MS as number 2, with 37 homicides per 100k (7 times the then national rate but less than Baltimore etc.), however, Coahoma Co had a population of only 25k, which means there were about 9 homicides that year. Nine. Sure, the _rate_ is high but that could be skewed a single (awful) family murder-suicide.
> Most big US cities aren't remarkably-horrible dens of crime—not relative to small cities and rural counties, anyway, and not when looking at the per-capita rate and including those lower-pop areas.
First, your link didn't compare cities, it compared counties -- and it's easy for a low-pop county to skew statistics in a single year.
Second, I never claimed "horrible dens of crime", I claimed cities had higher violent crime rates than rural areas. Some cities are wonderfully safe. Some parts of Chicago are wonderfully safe. As a general statement, cities are more violent than rural areas.
Third, my main point was that it isn't the guns, it's who has the guns.
> The safer half or so of large US cities are safer than large swaths of rural and small-town/city America.
By population or square-miles? Coahoma Co may have had a homicide rate 7 times the national average, but it had the same number of murders in a year that Baton Rouge had in a month. That New Orleans had in two weeks. That St Louis had in two weeks. That Detroit had in a week and a half. That Baltimore had in a week. That Chicago had in a week.
We've got a problem with violence in the US. It isn't the guns.
Imagine trying to succeed as a one-person company against Google or Amazon in the production of a literal commodity.
Centralized planning of food production has never gone well in human history as far as I'm aware. I'm not certain I'd like 2 or 3 giant corporations deciding how much corn will be grown next season to maximize profits, each eroding those safety margins a couple percentage points ever year for decades until something unexpected happens.
50,000 smaller corporations, sure. But that's just another form of family farming.
There are several sectors of the agricultural industry that are monopolies/oligopolies. And those tend towards making more money via producing more rather than artificial scarcity. If orange prices rise too much, then some other commodity will replace it. So instead of artificially restricting orange supplies, the industry spends tons of money researching and bringing to market more products that use oranges. Diversity and vertical integration are the name of the game here.
Even the pervasive corn industry isn't immune to being replaced by competition if prices go up.
How does this work? Wouldnt you end up with more and more descendants and inheritors over time, thus splitting the farm n-ways?
That said, their is some risk factors: if you're on a conventional farmhouse as either an employee or a small owner (less than 6 employees), and under a Fnsea-owned (or affiliated) 'co-operative', tough luck.
If you're working with an old co-op (family-owned) or one that work with traditional or conservative farming, you will survive the hard work.
I have family on all side on this (I think my mother inherited part of a wineyard exploited by cousins), and a lot of friends on the 'hippy farmer' side (with very different experience/exploitation for each one of them), and to me, the co-op is at least 50% of the issue. They are your coworkers, sometimes they own your debt, they are your point of contact to ask around for help when you have land-specific issues, or when you have to find parts for your pumps, engines or whatever. They can also push you to indebt yourself (to them) with their 'rentability' advices.
And BTW it's called co-op but it's rarely a worker's cooperative. When it is, you're in luck, but oftentimes it's a business.
Where did all the young women of the community go? To college, to get their art degrees and hang out in coffee shops. I don't blame the young women. Farming and ranching is a hard life and their wealthy farming/ranching daddy's can pay for it. But it leaves the one son who stayed on the farm lonely.
A few I know have resorted to mail-order brides from Asia, South America, or eastern Europe. Cross-cultural marriage is difficult but easier than being alone, I suppose.
Time - If something needs to be harvested immediately, it's not uncommon to work through the nights using the lights on the equipment. There's no such thing as set hours. You're constantly on the job.
Finances - Equipment is incredible expensive and is financed via debt but margins are low. You can end up just trying to pay off the loans. That's not even mentioning the land requirements (either owned or leased).
Uncertainty - You can't control the weather. You can't control the price of corn or soybeans. Equipment breaks down. These issues can easily snowball into affecting entire operations.
So what was once a fairly communal occupation is now fairly isolated, so the financial pressures, etc are less shared.
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/high-rates-of-sui...
But your point is valid. I have a cousin that farmed in the mid 20th century when they used chemicals like DDT on the farm. He is alive, but his body is falling apart. He is lucky that he switched to commercial/retail rather than trying to tough out a farmer’s life in his 80s.
The USA tends to assume everything is legal until there is evidence of harm. The EU tends to take a more precautionary stance and is more likely to claim harm with a lower barrier of proof.
Testing does happen, but the majority of it is done by the same corporations that have a financial interest in minimizing the negative results.
Round-up got caught in lawsuits mostly because they distribute to anyone, you think that amount of scrutiny is going toward every herbicide on this list? https://www.clemson.edu/cafls/research/weeds/management/herb... I'm not prone to fear mongering, but I can't imagine companies like Dow chemical and Monsanto putting much cash into long term mental health effects of exposure to any of their huge library of agro chemicals.
That's not even considering all of the other social and health care factors, as mentioned in the article. Honestly I'm surprised the rate is only twice as high as the average occupation.
It reminded me of other harrowing stories about our present-day food supply.
Slave labor, torture, and murder in the Thai seafood industry.
Considering farming critical and having some kind of census like information gathering interface could be a way to indirectly offer mental health care services without the stigma.
it already exists, it's called CRP - https://www.fsa.usda.gov/programs-and-services/conservation-...
I think it could be expanded with bipartisan support if they tied it to some of the climate change programs like carbon offsets. Pay people to plant trees on their land
Watching the plunder of mother's milk
Drenching earth drop by drop with our sweat
Yielding pearls yet our babies in hunger fret
Cotton crop watered by our sweat
Knotting 17 tears on our clothes
We farm with our sweat
On the pyre our bodies will only half burn
No money to buy the wood
Reins of our lives always in the hands of others
While grinding flour
The floors will stain with our blood
--- Shri Krishna Kalamb