There is a film, a short, called The Accountant that was made, I want to say, about 15 years ago, that vividly illustrates the tragic conditions described in this article.
I could go on about how these problems are created by deliberate government policy, corporate influence and all that, but the human story is far more important, and it speaks for itself - if anyone is listening.
8
Go here to read a very touch memorial to Mr. James Guy:
http://farmerpower.org.au/farmerpower/james.html
Here is an excerpt:
"My name is Courtney Guy, I grew up in prime dairy country in Simpson, South West Victoria. I am writing this letter on behalf of my family; my mum Mary, my sister Rhiannon and my brother Shaun and most of all my dad James Guy.
By writing this letter we hope that this can help bring about change and make people aware that our farmers still out there need help now!
So they and their families do not pay the ultimate price that we have!
Exactly 6 months ago to the date as I write this letter, my family lost our husband and father, our friends lost a great mate, and the community lost a kind soul.
My dad, James Guy, lost his battle on November 17 2016.
He was 55 years old and for his entire lifetime, all he ever knew was dairy farming.
He left school at the age of 15 to come home on the family farm and never looked back.
My dad lived and breathed dairy farming, he loved the country life and was never short of conversation about the farm, milking, milk prices, cost of production…anything farm related. Us kids would often complain when we were younger that all dad ever spoke about was the farm. He was a passionate advocate for the farming industry and for future generations of farmers."
(See above website for rest of this memorial article.)
4
Facile reporting. Jacqueline needs to break out indigenous suicides in remote areas - these are around 5 times the European rate. Also, I have no sympathy for Europeans losing the land they stole from the First Nations.
2
Thanks for that, Oz. I'm sure those farmers would turn back the clock 300 years if they could.
7
It is such hard work that is poised between the market forces--of which the farmers have no control--and Mother Nature.
Farming is a calling and only when we've lost all our small farmers will the cost become apparent.
8
Thoreau mentioned the disadvantage of inheriting the family farm which doomed the recipient to a hard life akin to pushing a barn down the road. It was tongue in cheek but in a ways, accurate. The farm I worked on stayed in business because they diversified, half dairy (100 head) and half fruit (apples). We as a people have grown distant from the production of food and a badly managed farm program is as damaging as a badly managed farm. As Berry points out, industrial production, financial "production", and agricultural production are based on different economic principles and planning, if the goal is choice and sustainability. Farms are neither banks nor factories. Farmers are craftsmen in a world of disposable, mobile, interchangeable parts in a distributed, global, workforce.
18
"But many experts say the biggest beneficiaries are larger corporate farms. Family farms are less able to ride out fluctuations in far-flung global markets that can drive down prices of their crops while raising the cost of tractor fuel."
The above NEGLECTED to mention that corporate farms have OVERPRODUCED and created the glut in the first place. That's what drove down prices, not any far-flung "global" market price fluctuation. Overproduction will cause the price of any commodity to plummet. Small farms as a rule do not overproduce, partly because they can't, and partly because they realize the ramifications of overproduction. Corporate farms don't give a hoot. They're sitting on corporate billions anyway, so what if a percentage of their production spoils and needs to be tossed. They've already accounted for that. Small farms can't afford to do that. Food production is, in certain ways, bad enough with the pollution it creates, but with corporate factory farms, it's 100 times worse, not only with the pollution it creates but the overproduction as a result that never gets consumed and the needless destruction of the environment and small farmers lives and livelyhoods left in its wake.
21
We measure the cost of the efficiencies of capitalist societies. Like measuring the health of the economy by the stock market, we let the "winners" define success on their terms and we mindlessly follow along. The problem is perhaps less that the big dogs do this, and more our lazy compliance.
Many towns see family businesses as well shuttering storefronts, also part of generations of a family. Like rats in a Skinner box, we are conditioned to celebrate low prices, which also deflate the value of labor. Prosperity is no longer shared. Lower prices lead the way in a downward spiral for workers who no longer thrive as they did 60 years ago, but hang on instead. Sorry farmers, but you have chosen to victimize yourselves as unique to the point that you no longer see what you have in common with other displaced people. Monsanto has much in common with Walmart and the big box stores, many now suffering in abandoned malls after devastating Main Street, by Amazon. The next wave of heartless efficiency. The economic hunters become the hunted. Yet we still can't help but look at stock prices and profitability as the sole measure of success.
Long before its embrace of labor unions, which it helped to create, the New Deal got its support from red state farmers. With fewer farms, farmers need to find allies elsewhere. Maybe it is time to give up rugged individualism and accept there is no refuge from capitalists who prize profit and efficiency over the human cost paid by the 99%.
12
"Sorry farmers, but you have chosen to victimize yourselves as unique to the point that you no longer see what you have in common with other displaced people."
A pretty good comment. Why did you have to discredit it with this gratuitous and cold slap?
1
The demise of small farms stems from the same forces that are shrinking the number small independent businesses everywhere. Corporate power (financial and governmental) and the corresponding mindset and drive toward monopoly.
Food production is too important to be organized around corporate profit. Corporate profit is nearly the antithesis of the sensible values society should share around food production. (similarly with health care) For food production, sustainability in all its areas of meaning has to be the watchword. Large scale corporate "food production" approaches could be leading us to a collapse of the food supply.
Artificial scarcity and disconnection from the land in the first world has created the drive and the need among most people for cheap food rather than good food. Cheap food produced in the corporate model relies on externalities that a more connected (to nature) and aware society would not accept. Our values.. allowing the reality of scarcity (poverty in the US) and the fear of scarcity to exist in what are nominally extremely wealthy countries and the nonproducing owner class to continue to create this poverty, must change.
17
Something this article does not cover is the extensive regulatory schemes facing farmers that exist in Australia, especially in Victoria. Like with most regulation, the large companies are able to bare the cost and burden of compliance and failure of compliance. Water use restrictions, land use restrictions, unionized fire brigades, taxes, liability for milk buyer's truckers, excessive minimum wage and weekend rates, and on and on. And as the majority of people are in the cities, these rural issues become farther and farther from the understanding of the masses and decision makers.
14
You mentioned several countries with similar problems but did not mention Canada. Why? Farm Marketing Boards. The big business model that the USA follows hates them. It wants the product as cheaply as possible, even if it means the producer goes broke providing the product. But once American farmers find out how they work, they wish they had them in the USA. How do they work? Very simply, they set quotas on much or how many of a farm item can be produced for the market. If the board finds that not enough is being produced, they can then raise the quota for each farm based on what it is already producing. Or the opposite can be true too. They also set the price of the product that the farmer gets, that price is based on the inputs required to get it to market and for the farmer's income to be good enough to make a living.
In NAFTA negotiations going on now, this is one item the Americans wanted remove and I believe the vast majority of Canadians would not want that. And Canadian government negotiators have remained steadfastly against the American big business desires on this issue. In this case people come before big business.
49
Funny, I was thinking the same thing. However, while the federal government today supports some marketing boards (dairy), it hasn't always. The loss of the Canadian Wheat Board changed many things here on the Prairies. We're no longer "the bread basket of the world," there's more money and stability in canola and soy beans.
7
The Canadian Wheat Board created a govt export/monopoly/subsidy that protected Canadian farmers and gave them an unfair advantage over lower cost foreign competition in the global market.
Ag or farm boards may be great in a domestic market but they create trade conflict when those domestic farmers they protect export their commodities. I believe countries go to war in many facets over these type of issues. One person’s govt boost may come at the expense of another’s knock down.
6
We had the Ausralian Wheat Board. Pity it was removed as the single desk after the whole Iraq corruption scandal....
2
From Wendell Berry's essay The Bad Modern History of Farming in the June 2017 Progressive:
"The land-using occupations, then, are of primary importance, but they are also the most vulnerable. We must notice, to begin with, that almost nobody in the supposedly “higher” occupational and social strata has ever recognized the estimable care, intelligence, knowledge, and artistry required to use the land without degrading or destroying it. Farmers may be the last minority that even liberals freely stereotype and insult. If farmers live and work in an economic squeeze between inflated purchases and depressed sales, if their earnings are severely depressed by surplus production, if they are priced out of the land market, it is assumed that they deserve no better. Their success is their ability to produce too much, which amounts to a kind of failure."
The essay is available online at http://progressive.org/magazine/the-bad-modern-history-of-farming/
15
Once again, people reacting to economic and social forces with despair and being labeled ‘mentally ill’. Last time I checked despair is a typical human reaction to despairing circumstances where one can’t ameliorate his condition under his own power and help isn’t coming from others. Capitalism and its mental health professional arbiters of what is normal and abnormal to feel have decided these people are ‘ill’ not just reacting to being crushed under the heel of power. It clouds the picture of what is actually going on, protects the powerful from any responsibility for making these people despair and frankly insults people who are actually struggling with illness.
Tolstoy’s happiest years were actually spent out in the fields, doing manual labor. But also remember this was towards the end of his life when he had embraced Christian Anarchy, had turned away from a society he saw as corrupt, wicked and hypocritical and tried to live a simpler life tied closely to following the Golden Rule and the teachings of the Sermon on the Mount.(and became a vegetarian for ethical reasons). He wasn’t trying to live the rural life of these poor Australian suicide cases, living a life as a cog in a vast, heartless, global machine of capital where the farmers are treated just slightly better than their animals bound for slaughter.
Turn your back on ‘mental health’ and capitalism and other isms. Love your neighbor as yourself. Treat animals kindly.
36
The plight of the family farmer is the same in the US as other parts of the world where Agra businesses are proliferating. My son-in-law took over the family dairy farm he'd worked all his life. Whether it was the price of fuel and fertilizer, bad weather, breaking equipment, high lease prices on land, the turnover of employees or milk prices at the bottom, it was all a recipe for overwhelming stress. Add to that the fear of failing the family by giving up and it was a pressure cooker. He was miserable, angry, sleep deprived and at least once suggested he'd be better off dead. Our side of the family spent five years talking to him, supporting him, getting him therapy and then waiting for him to come to terms with the fact that it was the farm or him, the two could not co-exist. He finally liquidated and left. He got a good paying job with regular work hours. I've never seen him happier. But the ending is not all good. His family has shunned him since he left the farm. No one has spoken to him in two years and most of them live within five miles. They have no idea what he went through to deal with the guilt of it all. even when it was destroying him. And they continue to punish him for the selfish decision of choosing to survive.
59
American Wendell Berry aptly described this very problem in his 1977 book The Unsettling of America: Culture and Agriculture. The evidence and arguments are complex, but the takeaway is simply that agriculture and land are too important to human survival to be left to the blunt instruments of economics and business. You can listen to American farmers and Berry explain the situation by watching the new film "Look and See: A Portrait of Wendell Berry" on Netflix or PBShttp://www.pbs.org/independentlens/films/look-see-wendell-berrys-kentucky/
15
I hear from a lot of farmers that the carping by the foodies isn't helping. Did you see the T-shirt that Sonny Perdue held up in his tweet the other day?
Stop blaming farmers for your flawed understanding of farming and food production. It's not the same as your backyard organic garden and you don't know better than they do.
14
This is such a sad situation all around. I feel so sorry for the animals being raised on the farms. It is probably worse for the animals at the massive farms.
Humanity is focused on itself, so self involved that we are missing the important thing, that we need to give back and be caretakers of the earth and the other beings on it. These men in the photo look so tired, so overworked, so worried. They probably are involved in farming practices that I personally would completely object to as being cruel, still I feel so sorry for them. We are supposed to be so smart, the smartest beings on the planet, why are we so disappointingly self centered and unaware of the ramifications of our actions?
9
I would gladly pay a bit more for milk and cheese so some poor guy can turn a profit, feel some hope and dignity, and not feel the need to take their own life. Put it right on the price tag on the supermarket shelf! Let people know they are helping those that grew their food...
There is so much more to life than making all the prices as low as possible! We can and should do more.
45
You go for it, but not me. I’m not paying for people to keep jobs that don’t even work for them.
1
Problem is, would the higher prices benefit the farmer, or the supermarket/middle man? There are many layers between the farmer and the consumer, each taking a slice. The example of coffee beans that are grown in 3rd world countries and then eventually sold for an astronomical amount per cup in Starbucks is a well-known illustration of this problem.
10
You could pay more, but if it didn’t go to those further along the supply chain, it would probably go to a huge agribusiness.
1
There are many reasons for increased suicide rates in rural areas, including those mentioned here already. But there are a few other issues that are generally not recognised or understood.
For example, many farmers subconsciously know that farming animals is both ethically wrong and environmentally damaging. Day in, day out, looking after animals you know you are soon going to send off to their deaths has to take a toll on anyone with any form of conscience. They won't admit as such, but when you bring up such issues, the reactions you get are purely defensive, they know there's truth to it but to admit it to themselves means admitting their life's work has been to cause cruelty and environmental destruction. Of course, there are those that have no concept of these issues and they feel no guilt, but there are those that do.
Some farmers manage to get out of the animal industry and change to growing crops, be it grains, veggies or whatever. Talk to those farmers, and they will say they are much happier for it.
However, farms that have run livestock for extended periods are generally very degraded, and a lot of soil rejuvenation must be done. Long-term livestock paddocks can usually grow grass and weeds, but not a lot else (we live in rural tassie on ex-livestock farmland, and the soil is stuffed, it takes a lot of work to get things to grow), except maybe hemp or similar, which has only just become a legal food crop in Oz.
13
"farming animals is both ethically wrong and environmentally damaging. Day in, day out, looking after animals you know you are soon going to send off to their deaths has to take a toll on anyone with any form of conscience. "
This statement is judgmental and insulting to farmers who are struggling to stay afloat. Farmers/ranchers provide us affordable food as in grain, meat and dairy products. And, as consumers of farm products, we eat them without feeling guilty, and worse yet we often discard uneaten food into the trash without ever considering that an animal had been sacrificed and that farmers had labored long and hard to get to the market. Instead, you projected an assumed guilt to be the reason for increase in suicides amongst farmers. This statement represents the arrogance and ignorance of one city dweller, fortunately.
Farmers face many financial hurdles, living a hard live, working long hours from dawn to dusk. I hope governments in Australia as well as US will provide low interest loan to farmers to enable them to navigate the changing markets and economic factors of farming.
14
I find this discussion disheartening. I come from both cropping and animal farming in Australia. Neither has the monopoly of environmental or “ethical” farming.
If your property’s so poor it is a sign the previous owners could not afford Fertilizers to assist the pastures. If you think crops has less an impact on soil quality find me a cropper, not a hobby farmer, who is making a profit or breaking even without Fertilizers, pesticides, lime etc. And then, what about the damage caused by creating these additives.
The negative dialogue of “bad farmer” for trying to make money by treating animals in ways that they were taught to, (by predecessors, agronomists and buyers) and financially restricted to, “bad farmer” because obviously you are doing something wrong if you are in debt/don’t understand foreign commodity markets and FX, “bad farmer” for not improving the environment on your farm (expensive- filled an erosion gully recently?), etc etc etc.
Step back and look at your comments. Why would solitary men under extreme financial duress, about to loose all they have known since birth, who hear and read such comments in the main / urban centric media and institutions ( govt/banks/etc) feel so helpless, so without option, that suicide becomes their friend?
As i said. Reading these comments so far has been disheartening.
6
You are so judgmental ..."their life's work has been to cause cruelty and environmental destruction ".......then the only farm you have ever seen was in a newspaper and you have NEVER talked to a real farmer. You may be "Earth" but you are educationally inexperienced and spiritually narrow.
3
I could be mistaken, if my memory fails me, but I remember farmers in the United States went through similar crisis in the 1980 when huge agricultural companies competed with and defeated small scale farmers. Many of them went into debt to stay in business and when the banks began foreclosures, there were similar reports of farmers killing themselves because they were losing a way of life. I don’t think anybody came to their aid because people were enjoying cheaper farm products. I hope policy makers in Australia take a different route and do something to help the family farm. But I am not sure the government will help because farmers , like huge agricultural firms, need a powerful lobby group and small farmers don’t have the money to hire them. It is a sad story indeed because my grandfather was a small farmer in East Africa and I remember he was always at the mercy of forces beyond his control...
31
It should be farmers that own land, not vast corporations, not wealthy landowners. Corporate agriculture has produced food that makes people ill, devastated soils and ecosystems and driven the farm prices so low that the countrysides of many countries are riven by the tragedy of economic deprivation and farmer suicides. When farmers own land, and are able to buy it at reasonable values, they can invest in it over the long term. They can improve drainage, increase manurial values, and organic matter, all the things that are now seen to be vital to the long-term health and fertility of soil, without which enormous famine would strike the world. And perhaps if there were fewer corporations then prices might be driven up enough that farmers could gain fair reward for their immense labour. In a related issue - the USA should be ashamed of the amount of farm accidents that affect children. This is because of the stranglehold of prices that mean small family farms can't afford to hire staff - using their own children instead to carry out adult jobs.
23
Isn't it nice to know that if you're a huge corporate farm the government will be there to endure you make a profit but if you're a little guy paying taxes you're on your own?
55
Wonder what the stats are here in the US?
5
I've lived for 30 years in Wyoming, a state with little farming and fewer ranchers and cowboys than you might expect. It also has one of the highest suicide rates in the U.S. The issue isn't so much agriculture as social isolation. People live in small communities (the largest town is 60,000), often with a narrow circle of acquaintance and a shortage of things to do to feel better. Add to that an expectation that you solve your problems on your own (as in Australia), awful winters, and a lot of alcohol and firearms about, and people kill themselves. Rural environments are probably rough on mental health all over.
61
Why is this being called a mental health crisis? This is a response to economic conditions and the tragic effects of capitalism.
69
Life is rough stuff for most people everywhere and always. It usually doesn't get reported in national news sources and people suffer alone. You need a modicum of good luck to come out the other end, relatively unscathed. I think the stoics had a handle on it. Read Marcus Aurelius and Epictetus and things come into greater perspective. Both my wife and I have had/have major illnesses but lead a pretty good life...always thinking about what we have rather than what we don't have. Perspective.
4
" .. tragic effects of capitalism .."
Tell that the families of the tens of millions killed by Communism. You'll get a talking-to, you'll never-ever forget.
5
Destroy the conditions for a viable rural economy through agribusiness biased policies +
Equate agribusiness with rural economy (NY Times I'm looking at you) +
Deluge rural communities with propaganda telling them the rural economy is great (NY Times still looking at you) +
Blame small farmers personally for the failure of the state to privilege livelihoods over shareholder profits =
Farmer suicide.
It's a well known issue and while mental health services are of course important, in this context they're the definition of a band-aid, not a cure.
33
So like the large companies force smaller business to close the large farms are doing the same thing to smaller farms.
I would bet the same thing is happening in the US without being recognized. The lack of labor to pick crops due to the administration's hatred of non-white immigrants is going to make it worse...
On farms a rifle is basically another piece of farm equipment (unlike weapons used in the epidemic of mass shootings).
8
This article focuses on the concept of depression, or more accurately despair, as being about individual pathology and that is true, but only in part. Repeated studies, over time, have shown that economic conditions significantly influence suicide rates. Now we also see that other influences on the economy, such as global warming, will also influence suicide rates.
The approach to reducing suicide has to include economic relief as well as treatment being available in isolated areas. And it must include reducing the access to means and that means firearm control too.
29
" .. Repeated studies, over time, have shown that economic conditions significantly influence suicide rates .."
Social science is very rarely "settled science," because the ultimate goal is to sway politics and/or raise taxes. There are other studies that dispute those "repeated studies."
If your job makes you unhappy -- leave the job. Now. Today.
1
Bing as usual doesn't understand the issues, which the article makes clear enough to me.
2
There is more here than what is described in this article. The story of individual pathology and its treatment leaves aside the bigger issue of how the deterioration of what it means to be human continues in the pursuit of profit. No one person can understand, let alone fight against, the trends which are causing the increase in the number of deaths of despair of all types and across most all communities.The suicides, the overdoses, the gun violence and the shortened lifespans which I read about almost daily in the US press are symptoms of a condition which has no name or treatment. The head in the sand approach is only going to prolong the agony that has been going on for years. Much has been written about the good that capitalism has done by lifting billions out of poverty, little has been said about how it has destroyed lives at the same time. Some honesty on the diminished prospects of the working classes along with ameliorating policies could have cushioned the wrecking-ball of unfettered globalization. A painful chapter in history is the best I can hope for, the worst I fear is the destruction of the environment and the end of the human race as I have known it. The next iteration of humanity will be better, perhaps, too bad I won't get to see it.
63
In the U.S. there is a similar crisis, much ignored. Federal farm policy has supported larger farms, especially huge farms, by allowing them to benefit from subsidies that were meant to keep small farmers in financial health. Giant, oligopolist agribusiness controls prices so they can extract the profit that individual farmers need to keep their farms alive.
24
" .. the bigger issue of how the deterioration of what it means to be human continues in the pursuit of profit .."
Yes, many are upset that a "people's president" charges $400,000 per speech. It is all we can do, to continue on ..
1
In your earlier post you decried communism.
I agree with your critical view in that everyone being equal without personal income or private ownership, all in the service of the country. Now, you also criticized "people's president" as in a democracy of showing rampant greed. On the surface it may seem like exploitation to you, but it is fair market value in a capitalist system. America is well known for the culture of philanthropy, well off people donate a great deal of money to improve the live of ordinary people, case in point Bill Gates, the builder Microsoft, who donated millions to promote world health. Additionally ordinary folks in US also donate money or time in various causes.
Democracy and capitalism allows a check and balance on private ownership vs. public responsibility.
The European Union use an environmental management framework called Pressure-State-Response. It is very useful in attempting to sustain all aspects of our community; Environmental, Social and Economic aspects. In Australia climate change impacts have been measurable since 1975. Changes in the state of our climate over this period of time have created pressure at all levels of society. Our response is non-existent and our acknowledgement of the root-cause of the problem by our leadership is almost fraudulent.
34
The government of Australia has cut back on scientific support, including the climate monitoring system. What is wrong with them?
13
There is a battle being fought globally today.
On one side is big agribusiness: get big or get out. On the other side are the voices in support of sustainable agricultural practices.
Global warming brought on by climate change exacerbates the conflict by reducing the amount of water available for irrigation and by increasing the severity of storms and droughts.
60