The past year has not been easy for farmers in British Columbia like Julia Smith.
In the summer of 2021, a thermal dome maintains dangerously high temperatures over the countryside. Forest fires in inland British Columbia spread flames and smoke throughout the landscape, destroying the town of Lytton and threatening Smith’s farm and ranch in the Nicolas Valley.
“In fact, we had to evacuate the cattle from the area because they were in danger,” she told CBC Radio’s What on Earth. “Holy smoke, this fire passed like a tornado.”
And that was not the end of the matter. In November, a series of atmospheric rivers flooded the province, flooding agricultural land that suffered severe heat just months ago.
Julia Smith is a farmer and ranch based in the Nicolas Valley in British Columbia. She says extreme weather events have had a serious impact on her mental health and that of other farmers and their families. (Submitted by Julia Smith)
Smith says some of her friends and neighbors lost equipment, animals and acres of land last year. She helped some of them evacuate their homes or move animals to a safer place. By the end of the year, she felt as if she had hit a wall.
“I just really started to burn pretty hard,” she said. “You feel guilty because you haven’t lost as much as some people, but you just want to crawl back in bed and pull the covers off your head. But you can’t because so many terrible things are happening.”
Extreme weather is changing the way farmers work
The life and work of farmers have always been subject to the unpredictability of the weather. But as the impact of climate change on weather becomes more apparent, this unpredictability is growing.
Farmers, who for generations have had guaranteed harvest time, for example, find that they no longer do so.
Recent studies show that farmers have higher levels of stress than the general population. According to a Cambridge Times report, uncertainty over the current climate crisis, as well as the COVID-19 pandemic, have exacerbated these problems.
Brianna Hagen, a postdoctoral fellow who studies the mental health of farmers at Guelph University in Ontario, says farmers she spoke to recently cited the impact of climate change as a major cause of anxiety and depression. She is currently working on synthesizing these conversations in a more in-depth analysis on the topic.
“The extreme weather that happens season by season has made the farming process radically different, more challenging and less predictable,” she said.
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It finances additional stress
The stress of financially adapting to these changes, let alone recovering from the damage already done, adds another layer of difficulty for farmers.
Shortly after the November floods, the British Columbia government promised that financial aid was on the way for farmers who had withstood the pressure of traumatic events.
But Nicole Kuiman, who runs a poultry farm with her husband in the Fraser Valley, says for many farmers, navigating the documents for access to these aids raises concerns.
“It’s just additional stress on what we’ve been through, and that’s what’s going to push people over the edge,” she said.
Smith takes care of some of his animals on his Nico Valli farm. (Tori Ball / Submitted by Julia Smith)
The British Columbia Ministry of Agriculture and Food has told What for Earth that it has set up a $ 228 million flood recovery program and regularly handles claims from farmers. In addition, BC Emergency Management says it has added staff and worked evenings and weekends to handle applications.
The non-profit organization AgSafe BC also offers some resources, including free advice to farmers in BC, but Smith says farmers do not always have the capacity to use them.
“It’s at the bottom of the list when you’re literally dealing with life and death situations,” she said. “You can’t stop and check yourself. What if you’re not well? What if you fall apart? … You can’t really look him in the eye because he can hit you.
The stigma of mental health continues
Hagen says some farmers are reluctant to seek help, even if they know they need it. The image of a hard-working, self-sufficient, stoic farmer endures and can be a real obstacle to reach.
“People don’t want to be seen as weak,” she said.
The floods last November came after Avtar Dylan, a farmer in Abbotsford, British Columbia, invested hundreds of thousands of dollars in planting what would be the province’s first saffron crop.
In the end, he lost everything, as well as 90 percent of his blueberry harvest. Earlier, during the heat dome, he had lost half of his blueberry crop.
Avtar Dhillon worked on a saffron plot on his farm in early November 2021, before floods devastated his crop. (Gian Paolo Mendoza / CBC)
There are many Indo-Canadian blueberry growers like Dylan in Fraser Valley who have been affected by natural disasters, but he says very few want to seek mental health or emotional support.
“I know many farmers [who are] “They’re already suffering from their mental health,” he said. “Nobody wants to say ‘I have a problem,’ but … we really need help.”
Moreover, for many farmers living in small towns, the stigma that continues to apply to mental illness means that someone may want to hide the fact they need or are already receiving help for fear that others in the community can understand.
Khukhrana Blueberry Farm in Arnold, British Columbia, about 15 km southeast of Dhillon Farm, after a devastating flood that destroyed the November 2021 crop (Ben Nelms / CBC)
The new programs address the unique challenges of farmers
In 2019, Hagen and her colleague Andria Jones-Beaton created a program called In the Know, which Hagen describes as a farm-specific mental health literacy training program. It aims to provide farmers with information on mental health, including recognizing signs and symptoms of mental stress and how to get help.
Hagen and Jones-Beaton have also developed what is known as a model for emergency response to mental health during agricultural crises, a set of guidelines that address the specific challenges facing farmers.
“If you don’t take down the agricultural context, you won’t be able to help effectively,” Hagen said.
Brianna Hagen is a postdoctoral fellow who studies the mental health of farmers at the University of Guelph in Ontario. (Submitted by Briana Hagen)
Deborah Vanberkel, a psychotherapist whose family runs a dairy farm in Odessa, Ontario, founded the Ontario Farmer Wellness Program for many of the same reasons.
“I kept hearing from all our farmer friends … that when they wanted to talk to someone, it was, ‘Who will understand my way of life?’ How will they know? ”She said.
“That’s why we need to have therapists to have this [agriculture] background so that these barriers can be removed as well [farmers] they can come in and start talking about the problems they have, and they can get that person to contact them without having to explain all the details or trifles about farming itself. “
Vanberkel’s wellness program was modeled on a similar one at PEI, and a third was launched in Manitoba recently. But gaps remain in other parts of the country.
“We need to expand all of these types of wellness programs for farmers in Canada … so that all farmers have access to services that are tailored to themselves and their families,” Vanberkel said.
Written by Jonathan Ore. Producer by Rachel Sanders.
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