Commentary.
In recent months I have seen several reports about the high rate of farmer suicides in this country. It breaks my heart to read the numbers, knowing these are people, not simply statistics. A 2017 Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) study found that farm owners and workers were three to five times as likely to kill themselves on the job compared with other occupations.
When someone mentions farmer suicide, many of us immediately recall the farm crisis of the 1980’s. More than 1,000 farmers took their own lives during those dark days of an economic crisis more severe than any since the Great Depression. More than 90 percent of those suicides happened here in the Midwest.
