FACTS
- Stress and fatigue have been identified as key causes of agricultural accidents, according to researchers.
- Stress from perceived overregulation and paperwork is an important contributor to the unacceptably high rate of accidents.
- The reasons for the high accident rate among farmers may be contributed to by excessive self-confidence, an optimistic bias, and feeling of immunity to accident or injury.
- Factors that directly impact farmers that they often have little control over include fluctuating crop and input prices, interest rates on land and loans, the weather, and finding good laborers.
- The CDC found a number of reasons why suicide rates among farmers and those who live in rural areas in general are higher than their urban counterparts. Access to mental health is more sporadic, rural populations tend to earn less, and overall health factors tend to be lower in rural areas.
STATS
- The leading cause of death for people aged between 20 and 34 is suicide – approximately, more than one farmer a week dies by suicide.
- More than 450 farmers killed themselves across nine Midwestern states from 2014 to 2018, according to data collected by the USA TODAY Network and the Midwest Center for Investigative Reporting. The real total is likely to be higher because not every state provided suicide data for every year and some redacted portions of the data.
- The CDC reports that the suicide rate among workers (ages 16-64) has jumped 34% from 12.9 suicides per 100,000 workers in 2000 to 17.3 per 100,000 workers in 2016. Suicides among farmers are 1.5 times higher than the national average and could be higher because some farm suicides could be masked as farm-related accidents, according to the CDC.
- The Bloomberg School’s Psychiatric Epidemiology Training Program, said that more robust rural firearm safety and control initiatives could help policymakers who are grappling with rising suicide rates, which rose to 13.3 deaths per 100,000 people in 2015, the highest rate in 30 years.