Climate change — and efforts to fix it — harming farmers’ mental health

Canada's efforts to reduce the climate impacts from farms will be most effective if they consider how they affect farmers' mental health, advocates say.

Agriculture is already one of Canada's most stressful jobs, with nearly 76 per cent of farmers experiencing moderate to high stress and having thoughts of suicide at nearly twice the national average. Fuelled by economic uncertainty and extreme weather, a sense that climate policies don't reflect farmers' skills and constraints is also contributing to their mental burden.

Agriculture is responsible for about nine per cent of Canada's greenhouse gas emissions, most of which come from cattle and nitrogen fertilizer use. Federal climate policies for the sector have largely focused on preventing emissions from rising amidst increased production. This includes reducing nitrogen emissions, supporting sustainable farming techniques and helping farmers adopt cleaner technologies.

"One of the most impactful places to start is involving farmers and ranchers and producers in the policy conversations," said Megz Reynolds, executive director of the Do More Agriculture Foundation, an organization that supports farmers' mental health. "Where some of the fear exists with Canadian producers is that the tools that they need in their toolbox in a given growing season are going to be limited because of this policy development."

Last month, European researchers found that the European bloc's climate policies are the largest source of stress for farmers in the region, helping fuel a tsunami of protests on the continent. While Canada has largely avoided European-style protests, similar issues exist here, impacting farmers and slowing efforts to tackle climate change.

The "big issue" for European farmers is the sense their "voices aren't being heard," explained Tomás Russell, professor of agricultural extension and innovation at University College Dublin, who co-authored the research. While climate policy has taken the brunt of the criticism, the fundamental problem is farmers feel "they are not being heard in the development of that policy."

Many of the farmers examined in Russell's study noted that negative media and social media portrayals of the industry also contributed to their stress and exacerbated mental health.

European climate policies have generally been more stringent than those in Canada, with rules for farmers to reduce the size of their livestock herds or proposed limits on the use of pesticides and fertilizers. That puts farmers, who are already struggling to make ends meet amidst high costs, under even more strain, Russell said.

A similar dynamic is playing out in Canada. In a February newsletter, Cathy Holtslander, director of research and policy for the National Farmers Union, pointed out that "pervasive economic uncertainty and precarity is at the heart of the mental health crisis" among farmers.

This precarity is generated in part by the corporate concentration of food supply chains, which makes it harder for farmers to demand fair prices. Most segments of Canada's food chain are dominated by about four companies, according to researchers at York University.

Soaring farmland prices and farmland concentration, trade competition and extreme weather linked to the climate crisis also contribute to farmers' stress, Holtslander wrote.

Canada's farm and crop insurance systems are also not robust enough to sustain farms amidst increasingly frequent climate disasters, Reynolds added. There is a "feeling like some of the programs that are supposed to be the backstop" are "really being pushed and stretched."

"It doesn't feel like that safety net is there anymore," she said.

Considering these myriad stresses impacting farmers, Reynolds noted it is little surprise some resist new climate policies. This is particularly true if they feel the policies weren't developed with farmers, acknowledge their existing efforts to balance profitability with environmental concerns — or guarantee they will not suffer financial consequences for changing their practices.

For instance, if climate policies require farmers to buy new equipment or adopt practices that could reduce their yields to meet climate policies, they want to be sure the changes will not erode their financial situation, Reynolds said.

Disinformation and social media also contribute to the problem by exacerbating political polarization. Facing a stressful situation, a sense of disenfranchisement and — like all Canadians — an information ecosystem shaped by social media where disinformation is rampant, Reynolds said there can be "a bit of a disconnect" between farmers and climate efforts.

That is "leaving a lot of producers feeling like one of the biggest threats to their ability to farm and their operations and the cause of the largest amount of stress and anxiety is policy or potential policy."

Take the federal government's proposed fertilizer emissions reduction plan. The proposed policy will implement voluntary fertilizer targets to reduce emissions. However, widespread misinformation about the proposal, which falsely frames it as a "ban" on fertilizer, generated significant pushback from farmers and conservatives last year.

More recently, DeSmog reported that legitimate policy and economic concerns among U.K. farmers have been "hijacked" by a network of climate denialists to fuel protests against environmental policies. The group, No Farms, No Food, does not appear to be operating in Canada — yet.

Providing adequate mental health support for farmers along with financial support and working with industry is vital to sustain their well-being, Reynolds said.

"One of the things farmers pride themselves on is their resiliency," she said. "But if we're never dealing with mental health and chronic stress, we don't have true resiliency — the ability with our minds and our bodies to bounce back."