Agricultural Cooperatives in Mental Health: Farmers' Perspectives on Potential Influence

Toward a Public Health Approach to Farmer Suicide Prevention: The Potential Power of Systems Change

OBJECTIVE

Suicide among farmers has, over the past 20 years, garnered attention from scholars around the world. The purpose of this paper is twofold. First, this paper will present a framework for considering farmer suicide that builds upon the Interpersonal-Psychological Theory of Suicidal Behavior and extends our current explanations of suicide to include a multilevel, multifactorial focus on individual, interpersonal, community and systemic factors at the root of stressors contributing to suicide among farmers. Secondly, a blueprint for farmer suicide prevention, leveraging the Water of Systems Change Model, is proposed.

METHOD

In the spirit of conveying multi-layered influence on farmer suicide while highlighting relevant levels for prevention a parsimonious, prevention-based model of farmer suicide is presented.

RESULTS

The Water of Systems Change (WSC) model incorporates research to bring attention to the community, organizational, and societal conditions that keep a problem, such as farmer suicide, from being eradicated.

CONCLUSION

Suicide is a societal issue that requires a multi-level response. Farmer suicide is a particular concern, as farmers provide for and support all of us. It is incumbent upon public health and the community-at-large to improve our policies, systems, and contexts to create an environment in which farmers are also provided for and supported.

Promoting Farmer Appreciation in Kentucky through a Farmer Cultural Awareness Project

OBJECTIVES

To address the perception among farmers of lack of appreciation and being devalued by the non-farming public.

METHODS

Oral history interviews were conducted to gather farmers' viewpoints of what the non-farming public needs to know about their occupation.

RESULTS

The creation of a public awareness campaign utilizing interview data, including canvas bags, information cards, and a website.

CONCLUSION

The public awareness campaign provides the non-farming public with opportunities to learn about the lives of farmers and their contributions to society.

Navigating Farm Stress: Traumatic and Resilient Dimensions of the Black Agrarian Frame

The current period of economic and social instability in the farm economy has generated renewed interest in the framing processes used by farmers to interpret and ascribe blame for the distress they have experienced. Studies show that agrarian frames are differentiated into types based on farmers' historical and contemporary racialized experiences. To investigate the role that agrarian frames play in navigating farm stress, we conducted a thematic analysis using data from interviews with 15 Black farmers from three Southern states. The results identify a Black Agrarian frame with two dimensions: traumatic and resilient. The traumatic dimension provides a system-blame narrative that highlights financial risk driven by institutions and racism as a core factor in farm stress. The resilient dimension describes collective action as a key coping strategy linked to understanding the farm as a multi-faceted asset. In conclusion, research on differentiated agrarian frames is an important component towards understanding how diverse populations navigate farm stress and the development of culturally appropriate resources for addressing it.

Facts and fears that limit digital transformation in farming: Exploring barriers to the outreach of wireless sensor networks in Southwest Iran

Wireless sensor networks (WSNs) are considered part of an environmentally friendly technology leading to more timely and cost-effective production and management of farms. Despite the potential of WSNs to agricultural development in the global South, outreach is still very limited, also in Iran. Therefore, in order to facilitate the adoption of WSNs, it is necessary to identify the factors influencing and challenging the adoption of this technology. This exploratory study uses a qualitative approach to identify the main barriers WSN outreach is facing. In the results, we distinguish facts that we define as issues or barriers that were identified by others from fears that are not supported by evidence so far, at the level of the farmers, the government actors as well as the technology itself. Facts include communication barriers such as internet access, farmers' knowledge levels and rigidity to change as well as the government's top-down organisation of the extension programme and support levels. Fears are mainly expressed on the technology itself and relate to costs, a lack of access, the complexity of use and reliability of the data. We provide a nuanced view of how fears need to be acknowledged and facts are to be tackled.