With the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration predicting above-normal Atlantic hurricane activity for this year, new data shows the season is also bringing uncertainty to Florida farmers.
The Florida Farm Bureau Federation, UF/IFAS Center for Leadership and Mind Your Melon Foundation released a report highlighting the mental distress that Florida farmers are facing.
Nearly 25% of Florida farmers reported that weather and its impacts on farms cause high levels of stress and uncertainty. Of the hundreds of responses collected last year between August and November, about 63% of farmers reported feeling nervous or worried about the future.
The Mind Your Melon Foundation is a stress and mental health advocacy program. Taylor Sewell, the co-founder of Mind Your Melon, said extreme weather is something that farmers perceive as out of their control.
“These people have their livelihoods in the ground,” Sewell said. “There’s that unpredictability of if this hurricane going to come through and wipe out my entire crop. Not to mention, from an insurance and policy standpoint, does the state of Florida necessarily have the right safeguards in place to support and protect these farmers and ranchers in the event of a crop loss from a natural disaster.”
Plus, other stressors from the report include market volatility, lack of public understanding of agriculture and financial insecurity.
While one of the top stressors is weather and uncertainty, the report also focused on the overall mental wellbeing of those in the industry. Of the 671 respondents, 67% reported feeling sad or depressed and 9% experienced suicidal thoughts.
While the report and survey focused on the mental health and wellbeing of Florida farmers, Sewell said in regards to hurricanes, impacts from storms can affect everyone.
“Here in the state of Florida we're growing things pretty much all year round, especially here during hurricane season, a lot of our fresh produce is grown,” Sewell said. “If we had a big, major natural disaster that took out those crops, we might start seeing some of our favorite produce staples missing in the grocery store that time of year. That's bad news for the consumer too.”
Mind Your Melon and partners plan to use these findings and data to intervene, mitigate stressors and overall work to improve the mental health of those who are farmers or work in the agriculture industry.
“We hope that in taking the survey, people were able to use it as an opportunity to do some self reflection and take a good assessment of where they are in their mental health and their overall well being,” Sewell said.
Moving forward, Sewell said Mind Your Melon will be providing and updating resources on its website to better serve people after obtaining these results from the survey, more programs to support Florida farmers and ranchers and even a partnership for virtual suicide prevention training.
"A healthy farmer means a healthy you," said Jaime Jerrels, Senior Director of Policy and Outreach at Florida Farm Bureau in the report release. "It is our priority to support the wellbeing of Florida farmers and ranchers so they can continue to provide a healthy, safe and affordable food supply for not just Florida residents, but Americans as a whole."
