Lean on me: Farm Bureau takes reins of Farm State of Mind campaign

SAN ANTONIO — Describing his own state of mind after his wife, Bonnie, lost her battle to cancer only a few weeks ago, Zippy Duvall’s voice trembled.

“The first two weeks, I held a lot of that inside of me and I almost exploded and then I realized I started talking about it and it made me feel better,” said the president of the American Farm Bureau Federation.

“Talk about it,” Duvall urged other farmers as tears welled up in his eyes.

“There’s nothing shameful about it. These tears are from love, not anything else,” he said. “We love our farmers and neighbors. We want them to have a relief valve and a place to find some help.”

Duvall and Lisa Safarian, president of Bayer Crop Science for North America, announced the transition of the Farm State of Mind campaign, an initiative to raise mental health awareness among the farming community, from Bayer to Farm Bureau at Commodity Classic in San Antonio.

“Whether it’s been market volatility, trade talks, commodity prices, extreme weather conditions, flooding, the past few years have really brought about what I would call the perfect storm of stress. Unfortunately, these are topics that I hear about a lot when I talk to farmers, and these are topics that keep them awake at night,” Safarian said.

Life Or Death

At a meeting with the Bayer field sales organization, Safarian heard a statistic that struck her to the core: Farmers are two times more likely to commit suicide than the average American.

“It made me cry,” she said. “I think that’s devastating.”

Bayer established the Farm State of Mind campaign last year to “step up during these trying times” and provide mental health resources to farmers, Safarian said.

“After developing the initiative, we quickly realized that this is more than just one company, one brand initiative. We felt strongly that we needed to identify another organization, especially one that is as impactful as Farm Bureau, to help take this forward,” she said.

“Farm Bureau is uniquely positioned to take Farm State of Mind to the next level. In taking the lead on this campaign for our industry, Farm Bureau will be lending their expertise on a topic on which they’ve already done some incredible work through their Rural Resilience program.

“We feel strongly that Farm Bureau is the right organization to drive this important work and initiative forward, capitalizing on their ability to drive awareness and reach with farmers and their families on this important topic.”

At its recent annual Convention and Trade Show in Austin, AFBF provided mental health training for state Farm Bureaus and county leaders.

“That training consists of trying to make people understand how to recognize our friends and neighbors and loved ones that are showing changes in their attitudes and their moods so that we can prevent anything from happening,” Duvall explained.

Weight Of The World

Duvall said Farm Bureau is made up of farmers and ranchers who experience the joys and the struggles of being on the farm and producing food and fiber not only for the United States, but for the world.

Like a “spider web” across the country, the organization reaches 5.9 million members and beyond, he said.

In a survey conducted by Farm Bureau last year, 90% of rural adults said mental health is important.

“A lot of people just wouldn’t admit that,” Duvall said. “We were surprised by that number.”

Almost half of those adults said they are personally experiencing more mental health challenges than they were a year ago.

“That means the pressure is getting tougher on them,” Duvall lamented.

“Just think what’s happened in the last six years in agriculture with markets and the trade war and then put yourself in the position of a young farmer coming into an industry in 2011 or 2012 with good commodity prices, starting with all kind of excitement and energy and then having the rug pulled out from under them,” he said.

“We have to really pay attention not only to all our farmers, but especially those young farmers that are totally stressed and have not had the opportunity, thankfully, to experience this before.”

Farmers are two times less likely than other rural adults to talk to a friend or family member about mental health, Duvall said.

“Farmers just don’t tell people their problems,” he said. “We spend our lives fixing things with baling wire and duct tape. We wouldn’t dare go in our house and dump that problem on our wife who’s taking time to raise our families while we’re out working.”

And, Duvall added, farmers spend a lot of time alone.

“I milked my cows every morning by myself. During those 30 years I milked my cows, a lot of times I was just pressured to the point where I was just miserable. No one there to talk to — and I wouldn’t have shared if they were,” he said.

“But then the next day I may be singing along with the radio with country music. It is definitely a roller-coaster ride.”

Lean On Me

Duvall said stress is at its highest in years for many farmers and ranchers.

“I was a young farmer during the ‘80s, and it was difficult. There wasn’t a night that you didn’t go in and hear about some tragic thing happening to a farmer somewhere across America because of the stress,” he recalled.

“We do not want to ignore the problem and have those reports come out on a daily basis. We want to help farmers before they get there.”

Farming is a complicated business — and it is only getting more difficult, Duvall said.

He cited changes and expenses in technology, as well as government regulations.

“Thank God this administration has helped us relieve some of that, but it’s going to take years for us to feel the release of that pressure that we’ve carried under the regulations that we’ve operated under,” he said.

The health and wellbeing of farmers and their families will always be top of mind for Bayer, Safarian said.

“That’s not going to change,” she said. “While we won’t be actively working with Farm Bureau in this campaign, we will continue to be a strong supporter of Farm Bureau and will continue to support this and all efforts that are about raising awareness and directing farmers and their families to resources like Farm State of Mind that may provide help.”

Combining Farm State of Mind and Farm Bureau’s Rural Resilience initiative will open up the lines of communication and increase awareness, Duvall said.

“In our conversations about mental stress and mental health, we hope that we can show our farmers and our rural communities that it’s OK to talk about it,” he said.

“Our famers can’t carry this burden alone. We need to talk about it to each other. We need to lean on each other.”