The ONE Thing Farmers Don't Want To Talk About | The Granary
Farmers often shy away from discussing mental health, but the statistics reveal a pressing crisis: suicide rates among farmers are 3.5 times higher than the national average, with 97% reporting depression.
In this episode of The Granary, XtremeAg’s Matt Miles, Temple Rhodes, Chad Henderson and Damian Mason tackle the stigma, sharing personal stories and the power of peer support. They highlight the importance of open conversations and seeking professional help to combat isolation, stress, and the burdens of legacy farming. This honest discussion underscores a crucial message: mental health matters, and no farmer has to face these challenges alone. Join The Granary to be part of the conversation and prioritize mental wellness in agriculture.
00:00:00 Farmer suicide rate is three and a half times the rate of average America. 97% of American farmers suffer from depression. 00:00:09 67%. That's two thirds of American farmers report being severely depressed. It's a tough business. Uh, and it's a tough topic 00:00:19 'cause it's about mental health. And as much as we wanna talk about how strong we are, we also need to admit that there 00:00:24 is a support group out there. And we here at the Grainery take this very seriously. We here at Extreme Act, take it very seriously. 00:00:29 I've got guys that we're gonna be talking to in this episode of the Grainery about their support group 00:00:34 and what they do when they get depressed, who they turn to, and how having a peer group have been 00:00:38 so helpful for their mental health. That's what we're covering in this episode of the Greenery On a Farm. 00:00:45 The work's never really done. We're calling the day anyway because my friends from extreme ag are coming over. 00:00:51 You ready for a conversation with some real farmers about real issues? The best part? You are invited. 00:00:57 Pour yourself a drink, grab a snack. Most importantly, pull up a chair. Welcome to the greenery. Hey guys. 00:01:14 Alright. You heard the stats. They're not good. We know it. We've all have been in this business. Um, a farm man 00:01:21 that I knew his family five miles down the road ended his life. It doesn't have to be that way. 00:01:28 We do have some real bad numbers. We also have a group of people that work in this injury industry who are exceedingly 00:01:37 self-reliant, and sometimes that means they won't turn for help. One thing that I value about you guys in extreme 00:01:43 ag, you're pretty open. Oh, you joke and you razz one another, but you call each other when you're having a good time. 00:01:49 You share stuff with each other that probably a lot of the farmers don't because it's a pretty isolating job for most people. 00:01:57 Is this your support group? I would say yes to a certain, you know, yeah, it is to a certain level. 00:02:06 Um, my family's the other side of that support group, that's for sure. Um, I've taken phone calls, so I mean, the reason I, 00:02:14 I don't know how much I'm gonna say or not say in this, um, I've taken phone calls from the general public, other farmers 00:02:22 that have thought about that. Um, and, and I can be honest with you. Like things have gotten dark enough sometimes 00:02:29 that have made me thought the same things, you know? So It's tough. It's a tough topic. And you know, 00:02:38 I think it's an important one. I can't think of any more important one. It's kind of an isolating business, you know? 00:02:44 But you guys have access to one another. Your dads didn't granddads, didn't you get on the phone and call one another? 00:02:50 You call Chad and Matt. You guys call each other and say, I'm having a s****y day. Things are really bad. 00:02:56 Things are really looking kind of bleak over here. You ever have that call? How many times a day did you say? How many times or 00:03:03 How many, how many times per day, week, months. Ooh. Um, yeah, we, uh, yeah. This is, this is definitely tough, 00:03:11 but I think at, I think at ex at extreme ag, and that's kind what we're talking about right here. You know, we're talking about groups and, 00:03:18 and we say extreme ag, but I mean, you know, and we talk about these groups a lot. Yeah. Okay. And we talk about it in, in a lot of times, Hey, 00:03:26 get with the group with fertility, get with the group and share information. Okay. Farmers share information. 00:03:30 We're trying to bring that back around, you know, so you got your group of buddies. They don't have to be extreme ag it, it don't have 00:03:38 to be something like that labeled. But you got your group man. You kind of know, you sense when a buddy calls you, 00:03:44 calls you, calls you, you know, and you, you've called and they call, you call, they call. And then all of a sudden you don't hear 00:03:49 from 'em for two or three days. Yeah. Something's wrong. Yeah. You know, and, and they start going down that hole. 00:03:53 You don't know if they had a bank call a no. You don't know if they had a, you know, a tractor blow the motor up. 00:03:59 I mean, I really don't know how I'm gonna get the crop out. You don't, you don't know what's going on in their mind. 00:04:03 So, uh, it's, it's definitely, I saw, I spoke at an AG Bankers meeting. I've done that a number of times. 00:04:13 And they had a mental health person up there on stage talking also with a lender. And they talked about this very topic. 00:04:18 Obviously there's some big numbers. We all know everyone at this table can name multiple farmers that went through bankruptcy, foreclosures and whatever. 00:04:24 It's just, it's a nature of our business, which can be damn stressful. And they talked about that very thing the banker 00:04:30 and the mental health professional said, when we don't hear from 'em, we know that things are getting dark. 00:04:36 And that's where, you know, they don't wanna reach out for help and they start going into a real downward spiral. And that's the thing that I think is cool you guys. 00:04:45 Now you don't have to, you have a network and if you don't, we'll be your network. Right? Yeah, Yeah. Definitely. You 00:04:50 have to have a peer group. It doesn't matter if it's extreme ag or whatever. You just have a, have to have a peer group 00:04:56 that you can bounce something off of, you know, whether it's dark or whether it's not. I've taken them phone calls and I, 00:05:02 and I have made those phone calls. It ain't, it's, it's bad. Matt is doing this thing. 00:05:10 When we talk about a topic, he gets real contemplative. And I know it's because you're probably afraid you're gonna cry. 00:05:17 You're afraid you're going to do something. These guys have helped you. Yeah. Yeah. I've, I've, I've been that guy. 00:05:24 I, I would say that, that I'm almost as good of a counselor today against it, not suicide, but the depression. 00:05:32 I mean, I've, I've battled major depression several times in my life. Yeah. You know, and, and one of 'em was when my dad died. 00:05:38 And there, I'm with this farm and, and as a farmer, you said it earlier, you know, you, you may not be, but you feel like, 00:05:46 so you're set, you're up here on this. And I pedestals not the right word to use, but you're here and then you look down here and you've got all your kids 00:05:54 and all your wife and all your family and all your Employees. And let's don't forget to employees 00:05:59 that we are, that are family. Right. You know, and, and, and their, them families are depending on you. 00:06:05 And if you fail Because you're making them a living. That's right. They don't need another job. They got a job with you. 00:06:10 And if you fail, you screw up more than just your own life. You Feel like there's a man and a woman 00:06:14 and their two children that aren't gonna have a, a roof over There. I said, I can 00:06:18 even mentally handle being dry land. Yeah. You know, I was to the point where I couldn't mentally handle that. 00:06:22 I mean to, you know, I mean, it got rough like you're talking about. Yeah. There's been some dark time now. 00:06:27 Thank God that I never contemplated suicide. Yeah. But I can see where a guy would, I absolutely. I can see where it 00:06:34 Yeah. Ain't no judgment here, is it? No, because you, and, and everything is on you. If you work for, for Apple, you know, 00:06:40 you've got all these other people doing the same job. You're doing people above you, people below you, you, if you fail, the business continues. 00:06:47 And you're, when you're holding all the balls, then if you fail, they all drop. What happens if you're a multi, multi-generational 00:06:55 family farm and you're the guy losing And, and the pressure just keeps compounding. It's just like 00:07:00 A vice legacy is You, you take that vice and you start turning that vice and it just turns so slow. But you know what they say about 00:07:06 a hole in a bucket, don't you? It don't take the little hole in the bucket to drain that bucket. Yeah. 00:07:10 Yeah. The, uh, eighties, of course we talk about that. And I know there's younger people are watching this show and they're like, oh God, another 00:07:17 old guy talking about the eighties. But you know, I'm old enough to remember, and I was out there working when I was 10, 11, 12, uh, 00:07:24 feeding cattle, doing the work. And every night you come in and we heard about how bad things were. 00:07:28 And there were those cases where a fourth generation, we didn't come from nothing. Hell, we didn't have a lot 00:07:33 to lose the people of fourth generation. It got real bad on mental health. Some of those people didn't end their own life. 00:07:40 They hurt somebody else. I mean, just got shot. And you know, and that's a mental health thing, obviously, when you're gonna go and they 00:07:48 Got shot over to Kimba in Arkansas. Yeah, Yeah. You know, I mean, your temper. Yeah. 00:07:53 I was telling, I spoke to about a hundred salesmen from, uh, uh, Nutrien the other day. 00:07:58 And I said, I would, I would tell you probably this ain't the year to go run out there, jump the combine 00:08:04 and say, I need to know what seed you're planting, what chemicals you want next year. I said, A lot of these guys, including myself, 00:08:09 don't know if I'm getting a crop on next year. Then you come up there bombarding them, they're gonna be mad. 00:08:13 I said, do you think farmers are p****d off? Go try to talk to 'em today. Yeah. Don't, in this environment we're in, 00:08:20 is is aggravating this depression and suicide back to where it was. You know, I shared a post the other day 00:08:26 and I mean, it, it's real. And, and the thing about us is we're all tough guys, right? Mm-hmm. We don't need help. We can do all this on our own. 00:08:33 That's what we're saying. Your dad, your dad's a tough older man. Yeah. He, he gonna go ask for help. 00:08:38 No, I'm too, you know, I'm tough. We've gotta learn that we're not as tough as we think we are or that we need to be. 00:08:44 And of course, you know, without faith, I don't know what you would do anyway, but I'm just saying that it, it's a big deal. 00:08:51 There's less stigma attached than there has been historically. That's right. If Chad said, 00:08:57 you know, I'm in a really bad way. I'm, I'm really depressed. I'll tell you what, like, I, 00:09:01 I think I almost need to see somebody. We would say, ah, you damn bless. I mean, we wouldn't say because 00:09:06 20 years ago they would. Yeah. And maybe you were 20 years ago, maybe I would've 20 years ago, 00:09:11 but maybe that's our maturity, but also maybe it's an acceptance of a real thing. It's an isolating, it's a fairly insular business you guys 00:09:18 are in and you also have, uh, wear a lot of hats. There's a tremendous amount of stress, there's a lot of capital, uh, involved and money stresses everything. 00:09:26 Uh, and obviously not to mention the weather, et cetera. So, uh, but like I said, I think the bigger problem than all 00:09:32 that on farmer mental health is the idea that you're supposed to be self reli. The idea that you're so tough that nothing can bother you. 00:09:39 You know, if it's your shore that's injured, you might say, I'm gonna have to, I'm gonna have to treat this. 00:09:44 But you don't, with your, well, You'd be labeled as a whiner. You know, we grew up, if you were, 00:09:48 if you were complaining all the time, you know, when I was going through my worst part of my depression, that wasn't cool. 00:09:55 You know, I couldn't, there you have about five people in your life that you can really go to on something like that. 00:10:00 If you're lucky, you've got five, sometimes it's one or two. Yeah. It's gonna say most time it's one, 00:10:03 You may have 20 people that you associate with, but if you got five really good friends, you're a pretty lucky man. 00:10:09 And back then those five friends, you know, might not be like, oh, you're just flying and don't worry about it. 00:10:13 You'll be like, you know, we're, and, and, and so in today's world, you're right. It's, it's a little bit easier. 00:10:20 If I call temple, you know, and I said, temple, I'm going through some emotional stuff here. 00:10:24 I need your help. He'd be like, what do you need? You think you went, he's never been to my farm, but if I called him stressed out 00:10:31 and said, I'm depressed, I need you. He'd say, what time you want me to be there? Yeah. You know, So the peer group is very, very helpful. 00:10:38 It's made you guys better. What'd you do before this? Just didn't have it. No, I, I think about 00:10:46 We have those, have those five. We all have those friends. Yeah. But I mean, you know, just friends change. 00:10:51 But what about before, you know, as much as we all graph about cell phones and how we'd like to just, you know, right now we sitting 00:10:57 around here and all our phones are, you know, not on this table. And it's pretty awesome. You know, that all 00:11:01 of us sitting here talking, ain't nobody scrolling Facebook. You know, we just having conversation. 00:11:04 But what about your fathers who had to battle that every day and you sitting out there on a roll pole tractor. 00:11:11 Yeah. You know, and it's always going through your mind and you ain't sharing it with nobody. Well, 00:11:14 You had one landline at our farm, uh, that was in the kitchen. So sure as hell, dad didn't come in when family sitting at 00:11:21 dinner and call up the neighbor say, yeah, but they're had a bad day. I'm really depressed in front of her 00:11:25 Body. Well, how many, how much access did they have to the internet and, and groups and support groups yet they Didn't don't with time 00:11:35 or anything that, that ate up their time. That was off outside of their realm. Yeah, because they only had their realm. Yeah. 00:11:42 Pat, you know what I mean? We have other distractions. You know, we have vre, a distraction. You know, it's not a distraction, but you know what I mean. 00:11:49 Yeah. You know, we have other things. So else in your lap that distract us away from, from that they didn't have that. 00:11:54 And they also planned things much better than what we do because they had to plan on who they needed to call before, 00:12:01 before breakfast at lunchtime and at and at supper. Mm-hmm. They had to do that because it was the only time that they had, they had 00:12:09 to get back to a landline to get to a phone. Right. And they were scratching down on paper what needed to be done. 00:12:14 Now we just pick up the phone or text somebody. I need this, by the way, I needed it yesterday And here's a picture of why I need it. 00:12:20 Yeah. This is what's going on in my field. Here's a picture and you sending that to California to agro And I needed yesterday. Send. 00:12:27 Well, I'll send you an email on your phone. You're Talking about Drew somebody next, talking about communication. 00:12:31 What's the best thing that yet ever helped your mental health when you were in a bad way? I've got a story I actually told Will, uh, 00:12:38 when we were setting up the other night, and I'll share it, but I want you to go first. Best thing that ever helped you when you were in a bad way. 00:12:44 Best thing you did. Best person, best communication, best message. You got Anybody made 00:12:49 A phone call? God. Yeah. Yeah. Phone call To somebody that's been there and done that. Some people, well, I mean, they 00:12:56 don't even have to be in there and done that. It's that phone call to that, like you said, them, them 1, 2, 3 friends that you got that you can call 00:13:03 with whatever that, you know, it's a, it's no judgment. You ain't a pansy. Like it's, it is what it is. You know? I mean, that's, that's the best thing 00:13:12 you could get, you know? And As a friend on the other end, you need to be, we, and when I said I'm a better counselor now than I, than I am 00:13:20 was before, is a friend on the other end's. Gotta have enough. I'm not going to use the word I want to use, but enough toughness to tell you the truth. 00:13:28 Yeah. I was, you know, I've told Chad things before Temple that I I knew was gonna make 'em mad. Yeah. And they've done the same thing to me 00:13:34 because it just, if you're, if you, if you've got that person, they need to be free, free and open to be able to tell you, no, you're wrong. 00:13:41 He's told me I'm wrong several times. This wasn't agriculture stuff. It's, No, it's empathy. 00:13:46 We don't even talk about that. But it's empathy, but it's also of love, right? I mean, it's, it's, yeah. And it's, I've been there. 00:13:52 I understand. And I'm concerned about you. I'm also gonna be honest. And that's, yeah. I'll tell you what you want to hear. Yeah. 00:13:59 That's what's worked for you. It's tough topic. Uh, when You think, alright, good talk. 00:14:06 Top topic. We've all been there and you know, it's really specific just to farmers, mental health, mental health. 00:14:10 It's just, there's a, to amount more, well, we're just farmers. There's a tremend amount more factors here 00:14:15 that spike it, you know what I mean? It's not like there's a lot of people that have a bad day at the office. 00:14:18 There's a lot of people that have, uh, financial, The problem is they ain't signed no crop note. There's a bad, there's a difference in, you know, 00:14:25 where a guy has a bad day at the office. Like I said, he's got all these other co-employees that can pick that up. 00:14:31 If we have a bad day, it becomes a bad year and then it becomes a bad day for everybody that's associated with us. 00:14:37 Yeah. And that is the, the mental stress. I think that that sets a farmer aside. Of course I'm pro farmer, but, 00:14:44 but a guy in a regular job has got other people doing the same jobs. If, if if we fail, we fail. A lot of people. Yeah. 00:14:53 That, that's kind. Maybe I'm partial to our position or Well, I, I don't, it doesn't matter how it happens. 00:14:58 It's bad. I don't think you wanna sound where the farmer has like, oh, nobody else goes through this. There's 00:15:03 Lots of business owners. That's right. That's Rightm a small Business guy. And I've been through some 00:15:06 very big And you're there on your own. Like you, you know, And if I don't make the money, there ain't no money. 00:15:12 So I've had the bouts of depression. I've had the downturn. Uh, Mrs. Mason told me when I was in the depths 00:15:17 of hell at one point, and I said, I'm just gonna go and get a job. I said, I've been throwing, I've been throwing, 00:15:22 I've been throwing stuff against this wall for four years. I said, I've lost almost all of our net worth trying 00:15:29 to twist the wind out here. I said, I'm just gonna get you a job. And she said, don't take that job. 00:15:34 She said, if you take that job, your give up, your spirit will be crushed. She said, I don't wanna live with a Damian Mason 00:15:39 whose spirit is crushed. And it's like an anvil off my shoulders. And then the depression within a week, I was euphoric. 00:15:48 It's just Yeah. The darkness in Lipton, because I thought I was a failure. Yep. I offered four years old. And, and it's just 00:15:53 that one person, you know, we didn't say that. I mean, that one person can be your father or mother, that one person be your wife, your spouse. 00:15:59 I mean, it can be anybody. You know? Yeah. That, That brings you out of Yeah. Yeah. And you know, I mean, you gotta look too at the, 00:16:05 at the women that's behind us at home, you know, that's putting up with us every day when we come home. You know, just like what you mentioned. Yeah. 00:16:10 No, I never, A good man's a great woman. Yeah. Yeah. It's every topic. I appreciate you joining for it. I appreciate you joining us for it. You know what? 00:16:18 You heard the numbers. I'll state them again. Farmers are three and a half times more likely 00:16:23 to take their own life than the general public. That this is not a stat to be proud of. We are tough people. We are very much self-reliant. 00:16:30 We are rugged and we do work hard. But you know what, it's not a crime to go ahead and admit that you need some friends, you need some support, 00:16:35 and you need to admit that you're depressed. 97% of farmers report being depressed. Two thirds, 67% of farmers report being severely depressed. 00:16:43 It's a tough business. But you know what? You don't have to tough it out alone. You can join us for says this, grainery can join Extre ag. 00:16:49 More importantly, get the help you need mental health professionals. It's not a stigma. It's not, it's not a dark stain on you. 00:16:55 We want you to be here, but also want you to join us for stuff like this. Join us, the grainery great friends like Temple, Chad 00:17:01 and Matt and me and you. Thanks for being here for this very serious but uplifting. Good message. Episode of the greenery. 486 00:17:11.245 --> 00:17:14.405
Growers In This Video
See All GrowersChad Henderson
Madison, AL
Matt Miles
McGehee, AR
Temple Rhodes
Centreville, MD