By Clint Thompson
Mental health was a focus of the recent Senate Special Committee on Aging hearing. Legislators asked witnesses, including American Farm Bureau (AFB) President Zippy Duvall, about the stigma surrounding mental health concerns in the agriculture industry.
Duvall testified about the importance of farmers discussing their feelings, even when times are tough.
“When I was back on the farm before I got this job, I was dairying every day; lost my wife of 42 years. My son went to war in Iraq, and with all the pressures of the farm, I realized what those pressures do to a man. Us ol’ farmers, we’ll sit in the back room and think we’re not supposed to talk about our feelings, but that’s the worst thing we can do. The stigma that goes along with it, the embarrassment that people think they experience is not really there. Really and truly, all they really need to do is open and talk. It’s okay not to be okay but it’s not okay not to talk about it,” Duvall said.
He cited a research study that 29% reported about thinking about dying of suicide among Georgia farmers. That number increases to 49% among first-generation farmers who had thought about suicide at least once per month.
“Those are devastating figures. We’ve got to continue to work in Congress to make sure we tear down these barriers that causes higher regulation, causes pressure for farmers, find an answer to our labor problems that’s workable for our farmers and be able to work with an undocumented workforce,” Duvall said.