American Farmers Confront a Mental Health Crisis

Greg1959

Well-known Member
"In Kentucky, Montana and Florida, operators at Farm Aid?s hotline have seen a doubling of contacts for everything from financial counseling to crisis assistance. In Wisconsin, Dale Meyer has started holding monthly forums in the basement of his Loganville church following the suicide of a fellow parishioner, a farmer who?d fallen on hard times. In Minnesota, rural counselor Ted Matthews says he?s getting more and more calls.

?Can you imagine doing your job and having your boss say ?well you know things are bad this year, so not only are we not going to pay you, but you owe us?,? Matthews said by telephone. ?That?s what?s happened with farmers.??

Glutted grain markets have sparked a years-long price slump made worse by a trade war with top buyer China. As their revenues decline, farmers have piled on record debt -- to the tune of $427 billion. The industry?s debt-to-income ratio is the highest since the mid 1980s, when Willie Nelson, Neil Young and John Mellencamp organized the first Farm Aid concert."
Complete article here
 
"Glutted grain markets have sparked a years-long price slump"

Supply and demand at work. As a former farmer myself, what I've never figured out is--when corn prices are low from a glut on the market, why do farmers go all out to plant even more acres of corn, adding to the glut and further lowering prices?

I understand that more acres are planted in hopes of more income, but under those circumstances why not say "Corn is a bummer" and try another crop that might be profitable? That would also reduce the glut of corn.
 
Eventually it will and the result will be a domino effect that will bring down more commodities. Ground will go to things like edible beans,sorghum,wheat,cotton and peanuts. Eventually the marginal land will go back to pasture and hay,feeding more cattle and bringing down cattle prices.
 
A real trouble area will be Nebraska, Iowa, and a bit of South Dakota. They are on an adrenaline rush still, but the disaster they are facing in the farm areas is going to wear them down and tire them out for years to come, as the reality of what many of them are facing from the mass flooding they have experiemced.

I feel for that region.


Myself, I?m getting wore out/ burned out from the weather. I got gored by a bull and put in the hospital and had to have the neighbor help with harvest last fall, the grain markets went all to heck and no money in farming.

Slipped on the ice 4 days ago and pulled something in my knee, can hardly walk still. Grrrr.

None of that bothers me then or now, but I am really getting worn down by the ever lasting rains and terrible winters we are having. I?m so sick and tired of mud. Every week, every day, have to fight the ever lasting mud.

The weather just wears on me.

I?m sick of it.


I think we farmers are a tough bunch, but weather and finances can really affect us.

Another thing that weighs on me is the fellas younger than m quitting farming. Good people, smarter than me. It?s sad to see good people leaving the field.

Paul
 
Well you see what happens right on here when any alternate crop is mentioned,farmers have a thousand reasons it won't work,can't work,got to deal with city folks yada,yada,yada etc.
Going broke doing what they are doing but just will not change so they go down with the ship.Saw it back in the 1960's when the big outfits took over hogs and poultry many farmers tried and went broke trying to go against basic economics.My dad had to totally change just about every thing we were doing on the farm just the way it goes nothing lasts forever.
 
When I was in high school, corn, oats and wheat were the staple crops. I worked summers for a neighboring farmer who was experimenting with growing soybeans. Everyone thought he was crazy.

Look how important soybean production is today.
 
Trouble is,it's just like this morning. I have a row of feed bunks where I have to drive in and back out. I drove in there this morning and the ice and frozen mess I'd been driving on started to give out with the thaw. When I backed up,the silage cart slid in with the left tire against the concrete bunks. Then while I was working back and forth to try to straighten around,the tractor spun down in to the mess and the cart was still angled in against the bunk.

I went and got the loader tractor,lifted the back of the cart and tried to push it around straight and the tire,wheel and hub fell right off the cast and into the water. The wheel bearings had gone out. I was ready to quit and retire right then and there,but what can you do? Nobody was gonna come and get 200 head of cattle today. They still have to be fed. So now,after all that messing around in the mud,water and grease,it's fixed,so I'm back in business for tomorrow.

It's like being ready to give up in the summer in a drought. By the time you book an auction,it probably will have rained.
 
In some areas there is no market for other crops. Hard to grow something else if there is nowhere within trucking distance to sell it, and you don?t produce enough to fill a train.

We are lucky out here in ND there are 10-15 viable crops.
 
When you know the government will bail you out to get your vote,why bother? Think "Market facilitation payments". Ruin the markets for your most devoted base of supporters,then pay them off with taxpayers money right before the mid term elections so they don't feel the pain and vote for the opposition.
 
I am wondering what the farmers in N MN will plant, with beans not being profitable any more in S MN they are talking about planting more corn. The growing season in my part of N MN is too short for corn to be reliable, and with the deep snow I expect a late spring. Last year one of the neighbors had a 1,000 acres of sunflowers but they combined them late in the snow and piled them on the ground. The smaller fields around our cabin raise a fair amount of Rye grass for seed, and you plant it late, in July-Aug.
 
You ain't seen nothing yet. Anybody who can hang on until late summer and early fall of 2020 is in for the biggest government transfer of funds from DC to the heartland to buy votes that anybody has ever seen.
 
(quoted from post at 13:41:31 03/20/19) Trouble is,it's just like this morning. I have a row of feed bunks where I have to drive in and back out. I drove in there this morning and the ice and frozen mess I'd been driving on started to give out with the thaw. When I backed up,the silage cart slid in with the left tire against the concrete bunks. Then while I was working back and forth to try to straighten around,the tractor spun down in to the mess and the cart was still angled in against the bunk.

I went and got the loader tractor,lifted the back of the cart and tried to push it around straight and the tire,wheel and hub fell right off the cast and into the water. The wheel bearings had gone out. I was ready to quit and retire right then and there,but what can you do? Nobody was gonna come and get 200 head of cattle today. They still have to be fed. So now,after all that messing around in the mud,water and grease,it's fixed,so I'm back in business for tomorrow.

It's like being ready to give up in the summer in a drought. By the time you book an auction,it probably will have rained.

Randy, that is tough. it makes me wish that I lived nearer to be able to help, just so long as it was in the AM because I am not worth a lot in the PM. Makes me glad to know that there are guys that will come help me when called.
 
Just your average Wednesday. LOL

Paul Harvey used to say,don't marry a woman until you've seen her with a cold and don't buy a farm until you've seen it in the spring.
 
Just saying guys--I lost my wonderful wife of just shy of 51 years on Oct. 29--We were neighbors here in cen. Mi. and our families were neighbors in Indiana before coming north in the 1880's. We knew each other for 65 years..I have suffered a lot of problems, but nothing even close to the loss of my best friend and loving partner....not putting other problems down, but the loss of your life Love will really hit ya....
 
The 80s had some terrible bail out programs that rewarded increasing production, which lowered crop prices, only way out was to grow even more to get more from the bail out programs.... that was ugly.

They realized the disaster they added on to, and came up with set aside acres to reduce acres planted, well anti farmer folk jumped on that and tell us farmers still get paid not to farm.

It really took the drought of 87 and 88 to grind through all the extra crops we produced.

No one minded the cheap food tho!

We kinda got back on track, we got ?freedom to farm? which sounded good.... and then it was followed with another huge and goofy subsidy farm program, for stupid.... that woulda been the time for govt to get out of farming.

But, clearly, govt wants to and will control Ag. They have made that real clear.

So, it is what it is.

Paul

Paul
 
You take their money you take their control,gov't can't make you farm you can get out anytime you want.I have never dealt with or ask for anything from the Gov't farm folks and think I'm way better off for it.
 
Just heard yesterday that there is 1.5 trillion dollars in student loans and you can't file bankruptcy against it. I never went to collage.
 
I don?t like to hear about other folks having a bad time. Farmers are being used poorly. It?s my hope that people in desperation seek the help that they need. And don?t resort to taking their own lives as a cure to their hardships. A permanent solution, to a short term problem.
 
I wonder how many of the hard times farmers belived El Presidente's bullschmidt and voted for him.

What is it he said again? Oh, yeah, and I quote: "Trade wars are easy to win."

He's probably just been too busy to worry about farmers. He's probably cashing the check from Mexico so we can pay for the wall. Gotta buy dem big steel votes somehow.

Grouse
 
I know what you mean Leonard. My younger brother was diagnosed with cancer last fall and my son got Bell's Palsy a few days after I found out about the cancer. It'll sober you up to what's important real quick. Sorry to hear about her passing.
 
To quote Paul Harvey again,if you're gonna have a disaster,it's best to do it in an election year.
 
I know what you mean Bruce. The New Holland salesman was telling me the other day that the wife of one of the BTO wannabe dairy farmers here told his (the salesman's) wife that they didn't know how much longer they could hold on. I started right over the table at a meeting one time to shut that little puke's mouth for him. The chairman was standing behind me and pulled me back. I want to feel schadenfreude in his case in the worst kind of way,but there's so much of this going on that I can't even find my way clear to dance on even his grave.
schadenfreude
 
Not superior at all, but I am very leery of taking things like handouts it rarely ends well for those that receive them.Look back over the last 60 years or so do you think all the
money Gov't has thrown into farming has really helped the farmers? To me its kept some farmers in business to their own detriment and has created the over production that is the
problem these days whether that was the intention or not matters very little now.I say that farmers in general would have been far better off in the long term if Gov't had stayed
100% out of farming and let the chips fall where the may.
 
So they did around here. All (that I could rubber neck from the road) the farmers around here planted cotton instead of corn and made a bumper crop season before last. This last season the rains came and cotton that should have been picked in November is still in the field, after field, after field. Big time loss.
 
Reminds me of a story Buddy Ebsen was telling one time about not signing a contract with MGM because of their demands. He said he and his sister were driving from one low paying job to another one,all wrapped up in blankets with a cold wind blowing up through the floorboards of the car. He said he couldn't help but start laughing. His sister asked him what was so funny. He told her "Sam Goldwin's not telling me what to do.".
 
Sorry for your loss Lenray. You help us keep things in perspective.

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The farm bill is designed to help bankers, insurance companies, and local property tax bases. The money is passed on to those folk. Perhaps many Congress folk don?t really even know that, but those are the groups that pay good money to write the farm bill, and they select the farmers and farm groups that say what needs to be in the farm bill.....

If you play the farming game in a low population rural cornbelt region, you don?t have the options available a garden farmer like you has, and so either you take some of the money when it?s offered or you watch the neighbors farm your land. That is the economic model out here in the rural plains.

But again, I?m just a dumb hick, I?m not a smart super farmer like you are. I have to work within my disabilities.

Paul
 
Farm programs broke me. PIK caused corn to rise so hog finishers left the barns empty in summer of 84. I could hardly give feeder pigs away while my feed costs went through the roof. Interfering in the market usually causes unintended carnage somewhere else in the economy.
 
I'm not a great farmer for sure but am going to be watching and protecting my financial situation in and outside of farming.As far as location almost 90% of the goat meat sold in
the USA is imported,most of that comes from goats grown in the very rural areas of Australia.They slaughter,process and freeze the goats over there and then ship it clear over here.I'd assume they make a profit or they wouldn't do it.Seems like some farmers in the isolated parts of the USA where prices are down on crops could do the same as the Aussies with a whole lot less
shipping costs.
 
That's what I am saying Farm Programs have cause way more problems than they have ever solved,short term handouts are the worst they usually just encourage more of the same behavior that
caused the original problems.And as you pointed out create other problems.Plus a huge waste of Taxpayer money.
 
(quoted from post at 10:30:40 03/21/19) I'm not a great farmer for sure but am going to be watching and protecting my financial situation in and outside of farming.As far as location almost 90% of the goat meat sold in
the USA is imported,most of that comes from goats grown in the very rural areas of Australia.They slaughter,process and freeze the goats over there and then ship it clear over here.I'd assume they make a profit or they wouldn't do it.Seems like some farmers in the isolated parts of the USA where prices are down on crops could do the same as the Aussies with a whole lot less
shipping costs.

Tf, we are all painfully aware of the millions that are to be had in selling goats to immigrants . Could you enlighten us on your profitability in this venture? What are the costs, time to market, gross profit, etc? Do you allow your customers to butcher onsite?

I had looked into growing goats briefly because local dairy goat herds practically give away bottle kids, but decided against because goats are known for either being healthy or dead. One (somewhat) local cl ad states $3 per pound live weight for 60-80 pounders and they state several times that they will not allow butchering onsite.

Asking for a friend, of course...
 
Well first off I'll warn you there is no Gov't Farm Programs/Money to be gotten raising goats that I know of,might be of course but I haven't looked for it so some may loose interest right there.As far as sales I don't usually sell off the farm individually as it takes time I usually load them up in the stock trailer and take them up to Winchester VA to the Livestock Market best goat market in Virginia,also a good cattle market
so I can take a compartment of calves and one of goats in the stock trailer.If I were going to do on farm sales $3/lb would be the minimum I sell them for as the last bunch I took to Winchester bought in the $2.60 to $2.80 range.Goat prices vary though out the year and are influenced by ethnic Holidays.So you have to stay on top of that as a general rule prices will be the best in December,although there is a Middle Eastern religious (can't put the actual word on YT) slaughterhouse just up US 29 from me they buy on a pretty regular basis I've heard and pay market value or a little over to get goats.
Got have good fences but they do well running them with cattle and both the cows and goats are better off than running them in the same field,they keep the bushes,vines and that type vegetation in check so little or no brush hogging needs to be done.Goats are sensitive to poisonous sprays but since I don't do any of that its not a problem for me.I raise high percentage Kiko goats they are known for their good health and stamina and I cull them pretty hard too.They are not exactly like cattle for sure and a little more trouble in ways but the key to keeping them healthy is plenty of good mineral and not over stock.But I'll say most of my friends that have cattle had rather get whipped with a Hickory stick than raise goats for some reason,which is a shame since the mountains and hills in my area is the perfect type area for them to do well.One thing for sure though is Livestock Guard Dogs are needed as Coyotes in my area will kill them for sure,they also kill calves sometimes so having the Great Pyrenees around are a plus for the cows too.
 

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