Farmer S*icide Epidemic (Script & Sources)

Content warning: this episode includes a mention of self-harm.

Good morning, bad news: we are facing an epidemic of farmers dying by s*icide. According to the CDC, agriculture workers have one of the highest rates among all occupations, and a study by USA Today found that at least 450 farmers in the Midwest had killed themselves from just 2014 to 2018, although the real number is likely much higher. Let’s talk about how American capitalist intervention in farming is destroying farmers’ lives, their families, their farms, the food economy, the environment, and by extension, all of us.

We are in the midst of a farming crisis that very few people are talking about. Today’s small farmers have more debt than ever before, are declaring bankruptcy en masse, and losing farms that have been in their families for generations, while massive agriculture giants are hoarding most of the money earmarked for farmers who have been struggling.

According to Time Magazine, Between 2011 and 2018, over 100,000 small farms were shut down, and 50% of farmers haven’t made a profit since 2013. In the last 30 years, small farms have gone from producing half of all the food in the United States, to just a quarter - and in some industries, like dairy, small farms now account for just a tenth of production.

The reasons are varied, but easy to point out. As massive corporate farms grew in size, they also grew in efficiency - powered by billions in government subsidies that were lobbied for, under the guise that they would help support rural communities (they did the opposite). With subsidy-fueled technological advancements, corporate farms have been able to produce more food for less money, dropping prices dramatically for staple crops like corn and soybeans. In fact, almost everything grown in the US now is corn and soybeans - and as small, diversified farms have been put out of business, their land has been captured for pennies on the dollar by billionaire farming conglomerates, thereby devaluing other small farmers still struggling to stay afloat. This hyper-focus on corn and soybeans is due to government subsidies of them - both of which require massive amounts of nitrogen-based fertilizer, the use of which poisons the soil, and produces incalculable amounts of carbon emissions.

This snowball effect has only been exacerbated by severe weather conditions like droughts and floods, made worse by climate change. Ironically, factory farming practices are one of the biggest contributors to climate change, with agriculture alone accounting for 10% of the US’s greenhouse gas emissions. And while corporate farms have been able to weather the storms they’ve created with their massive reserves of cash and land, small farmers don’t have the same ability to stay solvent for long.

But all that is just the tip of the iceberg. The unprecedented rate of damage being caused by corporate farming means that in order to maintain the rate of production, these companies are investing heavily into patented and genetically modified crops that can withstand the floods and droughts they are causing, and to increase and protect their yield, they’re pumping dangerous new pesticides into our food, air, and water - earning billions for agri-chemical companies like Monsanto, Dow Chemical, and DuPont.

So while small farmers watch generations of their families’ livelihood taken over and extracted by billionaire lobbyist agri-giant corporations, who only get richer while individual farmers get poorer, there is simply nowhere for them to turn, and perhaps equally as importantly, no mental health resources. In fact, Congress has been aware of the mental health epidemic among farmers since at least 2008, when they passed the Farm and Ranch Stress Assistance Network Act, which explicitly promised grants to states to help create mental health resources for agriculture workers. That was 13 years ago, and 2019 was the first year any money was appropriated.

It’s hard not to look at the flood of deaths with no effort to stop them, against the billions in taxpayer dollars spent guaranteeing that corporate farms can continue extracting every ounce of value out of the earth, no matter the long-term, or short-term devastation.