The sea of dark purple on a map of Illinois counties told a concerning story. Most of the counties were dark purple, indicating a shortage of mental and behavioral health providers in those areas. Only a handful of counties, mostly in Cook County and the collar counties, had no shortage or partial shortages.
But it’s not just an Illinois issue. Mental health care in rural areas throughout the U.S. is in crisis.
Heather Whetsell, Southern Illinois University Medicine Population Science & Policy administrative director, presented findings of a yearlong study into mental health care in rural areas during the National Rural Health Association’s (NRHA) Annual Rural Health Conference in May. The research was conducted by the NRHA Rural Health Fellows mental health workgroup.
Barriers to mental health care in rural America are driven by three factors: availability of health care, access and acceptability, the fellows found.
“There are a lot of efforts going into trying to recruit and retain providers in these areas, but as you know, it’s an uphill battle,” said Janessa Graves, associate profes sor of nursing, Washington State University, who grew up in central Illinois.
When it comes to acceptability, the Fellows are specifically referring to stigma.
“It’s a documented problem in rural communities: mental health stigma both for discussing issues but then also accessing services,” Graves said. “Also, health literacy is an issue and then lack of privacy. I live in a town of 2,000 people and everyone knows when I go get my hair cut, much less if I’m frequenting a mental health care provider in my town.”
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The report was not all doom and gloom; part of its policy brief included recommendations as well as innovative projects already in the works.
A heavy emphasis was placed on workforce recruitment and retention, including stipends and paid internships for rural providers, expansion of loan repayment programs, salary and bonus incentives and equitable grant making so all government funding isn’t going to larger, urban health centers with expe rienced grant writers.
The health and wellness of the work force also must be maintained and even enhanced for mental health providers to stay in rural areas.
“You can’t pour from an empty cup,” said Brenda Mack, assistant professor of social work, Bemidji State University. “If we are emotionally exhausting our mental health care providers, they’re not going to have anything else to give to the patients.”
Other recommendations to address barriers included co-locations of ser vices, expanding prevention programs, Medicare expansion for mental health providers and community engagement activities.
Mack hosts a monthly project called Cultivating Resiliency for Women in Agriculture, which is essentially a vir tual coffee chat with an emphasis on wellness and well-being.
“We have folks who are joining us from their tractors and from their barns,” she said.
In Illinois, Whetsell outlined the Healthy Hillsboro project, which launched when a frightening trend of youth suicide attempts emerged in the community.
The Partnership between SIU Medi cine Department and Hillsboro Area Hospital won the 2022 NRHA Outstand ing Rural Health Program Award for developing an assessment of contribut ing factors to the trend while involving a coalition of community members to best choose programs to meet the needs of local youth.
“One major benefit that we’ve seen already is a decrease in stigma around mental health,” Whetsell said. “And get ting the youth to talk about it.”
This story was distributed through a cooperative project between Illinois Farm Bureau and the Illinois Press Associa tion. For more food and farming news, visitFarmWeekNow.com.
BY TAMMIE SLOUP FarmWeek
While much research has centered on farm stress, studies have predomi nately focused on adult farmers and agricultural workers.
Children and adolescents, who often have farm responsibilities, have largely been left out of studies and conversa tion about mental health.
That is starting to change.
Josie Rudolphi, assistant professor and Extension specialist in the Depart ment of Agricultural and Biological Engineering at the University of Illi nois and director of the North Central Farm and Ranch Stress Assistance, is part of a research team focusing on how farm stress and mental health is experienced throughout the family.
Prevalence of mental health condi tions and even risk for suicide is higher among agricultural populations than the general population.
“But a lot of what we know has focused on adult farmers and agricul tural workers,” Rudolphi said during a recent webinar focusing on farm youth mental health and hosted by AgriSafe.
“We know that the farm is a business but it’s also a residence. We know there are upwards of 2 million youth who are either living or working on a farm. We know they’re often participating in farm work or present in the farm envi ronment and experiencing some of these stressful realities of agricultural production. But children have been absent from a lot of the research we’ve done around farm stress.”
The Farm Adolescent and Adult Mental Health Study (FAAM) is a proj ect of the National Children’s Center for Rural and Agricultural Safety and Health and the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.
Now in year two of the five-year study, adolescents and farm owner/ operators were recruited this summer for a confidential online survey to help develop resources and programs to reduce farm-related stress, improve resiliency and improve overall physi cal and mental health among farm adults and farm adolescents. More than 122 families participated, including 26 from Illinois, and were screened for depression and anxiety symptoms.
In both categories and for both ado lescents and adults, at least 60% experi enced at least mild symptoms of depres sion and anxiety — more than the general population, Rudolphi said.
More people are talking about mental health on the farm, but young people are often being left out of the conversation
Rudolphi has also worked closely with fellow presenter Jana Davidson, program manager at the Progressive Agriculture Foundation, which is North America’s largest safety and health edu cational program for children. A couple years ago, the foundation spearheaded a roundtable on farm youth mental health.
“We have a vision that no child would become ill, injured or die from farm ranch and rural activities,” Davidson said. “We knew there were a lot of folks coming together and talking about farm mental health, but the children were being left out. So we decided the best way for us to kind of get a pulse on what was happening ... was to have a roundtable.”
Roundtable participants found spe cific stressors are common to farm youth: weather, family finances, long work hours, negative interactions with those who have a disconnect with the ag indus try, pressure to carry on farming tradi tion, and inability to participate in extra-curricular activities
“Our focus is for children to under stand stress and emotions, and begin to make that connection between mental health and physical health to break the stigma between the two — they really do go hand-in-hand,” Davidson said.
When bringing the curriculum into the classroom for ag safety days, David
son said they focus on fun, hands-on activities, such as making stress balls. The foundation also provides take-home bags for students with more reference materials and guides for parents on how to talk to their children about stressors and mental health.
A few small acts can make a big impact, Davidson said, adding that she’s read there are nine vital minutes each day for a child: the three minutes after they wake up, three minutes after they get home from school and the three min utes before they go to bed.
“So, remember that when trying to make those memorable for that child,” Davidson said. “Ask them questions, lis ten — we can all be better listeners — and make sure we’re present in their lives.”
She also encouraged role modeling when it comes to coping with stress.
“Our children are looking to us as their first teacher to guide them. So, if we practice self-care and encourage them to do the same, they will likely adopt it. If we have coping strategies when we get stressed out ... whether that’s yoga, jour naling, riding a bike ... they’ll learn to adopt those practices.”
This story was distributed through a cooperative project between Illinois Farm Bureau and the Illinois Press Association. For more food and farming news, visit FarmWeekNow.com.
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Calculating the number of severe injuries and fatalities surrounding agriculture in Illinois is largely yeo man’s work because there is no single government agency report or public database that tracks and compiles the incidents.
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, through its Fatality Analysis Reporting Systems, releases annual data on deaths that occur on roadways; and the Bureau of Labor Sta tistics, through its Census of Fatal Occu pational Injuries each year, publishes data on workplace deaths by industry.
Both reports code for deaths related to farm equipment and industries that relate to agriculture, but often lag a year or two behind, and they don’t cap ture every incident.
The Occupational Safety and Health Administration provides annual reports on non-fatal, severe injuries stemming from employers within the ag industry. But those reports are self-surveys and remain specific to companies with 10 or more employees, meaning most farm operations are not required to report a severe injury that takes place.
An online repository of news reports of farm fatalities and severe injuries has been managed since 2015 by the National Farm Medicine Center at the Marshfield Clinic Research Institute.
The Purdue University Agricultural Confined Space Incident Database since 2012 has tracked by year the number of
fatal and non-fatal incidents around grain bins and other confined spaces.
While the latter two are credible sources, they also rely on self-reporting and other aggregators of the data.
The issue compounds further for non-fatal injuries, news of which usu ally doesn’t make it off the farm unless public safety agencies release informa tion.
“For non-fatal incidents, it’s a lot trickier,” said Salah Issa, an assistant professor at the University of Illinois who specializes in agricultural and industrial safety and health.
“At this moment we are not as cer tain what the trends are,” Issa said. “It’s a lot harder to capture non-fatal injuries, ... so that’s one area of research that we’re trying to explore and better understand.”
To get there, Issa has been catalog ing fatal and non-fatal data through the government reports, news stories and other channels, like death certificates. His goal is to create an online dash board showing incident data at the county level.
“My ultimate goal is bringing farm injuries and deaths into the hands of people who need them,” Issa said, not ing that while studies and reports are interesting to academics, they’re “not actionable for communities that are impacted by these incidents.”
Armed with regional data on farm injuries, Issa said entities like health departments, county Farm Bureaus and local governments could then take action to address trends.
That action could take shape in sev
eral ways.
“It could be more that this county or this region needs more safety training; it could be that it’s just the equipment; it could be that you need standards; it could be that you need regulations; it could be that it needs policy changes,”
Issa said. “But to start all the action, you need to raise awareness.”
This story was distributed through a cooperative project between Illinois Farm Bureau and the Illinois Press Association. For more food and farming news, visitFarmWeekNow.com.
The outbreak of highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI) spread its wings across a much larger portion of the U.S. in the past year compared to the previous outbreak in 2015.
It’s also continued to drive up food price inflation, which has soared to 11.4% in recent months — the largest 12-month increase since the period ending in May 1979.
“It appears the disease is now far more widespread than in the past, with a very large number of bird spe cies affected,” authors of the CME Group’s Daily Livestock Report noted.
Cases of HPAI have been confirmed in nearly every state. The turkey industry alone lost more than 5 million birds, prior to a recent outbreak in California. USDA also reported an outbreak of HPAI affecting 175,000 turkeys in Minnesota in September, which was the first con
firmed case in the Midwest since May.
“When we find a case, those birds are isolated and the flock is depopu lated,” said Bernt Nelson, American Farm Bureau Federation economist.
Consumers will be able to find tur keys for the upcoming holiday season, according to Nelson. But they should prepare for high prices.
“The reduction in (turkey) supply is largely responsible for the increase in prices,” said Nelson, who recently dis cussed the situation on CBS News MoneyWatch. “Will HPAI have a fur ther impact on supply? We could see
The weekly average price for an 8- to 16-pound turkey was $1.85 per pound on Sept. 3, 27% higher than the same time last year. Breast cuts are leading the surge with an average price of $6.65 per pound on Sept. 3 compared to $3.13 at the same time last year, Nelson noted.
Meanwhile, the loss of chickens to HPAI led to egg prices nearly tripling in the past year.
It’s one of the numerous contribu tors to the historic run-up in food prices. Other key factors include ongo ing supply chain issues, escalating
costs for shipping, packaging and fuel, a labor shortage and widespread drought in the western U.S. impacting food output.
Meanwhile, food demand remains strong around the world. U.S. beef exports were valued at $6.45 billion from January through July, up 29% from the same time last year.
Tight supplies and higher prices rationed U.S. pork exports, though, which were valued at $3.56 billion the first half of the year, 15.9% lower than a year ago, according to the Daily Live stock Report.
Overall, there doesn’t appear to be much relief from inflationary pressure any time soon. USDA expects food prices to grow more slowly in 2023 compared to 2022, but still above the historic average rate.
Nationwide, inflation of all goods measured remained at an historic high in August (8.3%), although it decelerated slightly compared to the previous month.
This story was distributed through a cooperative project between Illinois Farm Bureau and the Illinois Press Association. For more food and farm ing news, visit FarmWeekNow.com.
BY TOM C. DORAN Shaw Media AgriNews
BLOOMINGTON, Ill. — An Illi nois-based pilot program has been launched that allows farmers and ranchers to offer products to non-prof its for free or reduced prices.
The Donations and Discount Depot is sponsored by the Illinois Farm Bureau and provided online by Mar ketMaker in partnership with Food 4All.
The program has been working with a limited number of farmers and nonprofits on a soft launch, and the program will launch in full beginning in January 2023.
“Through the Donations and Discount forum, farmers can immediately post on the website if they have uncon tracted, unsold, excess or oth erwise unwanted products that don’t have a home, at whatever rate that they want,” said Raghela Scavuzzo, Illi nois Specialty Growers Asso ciation executive director and associ ate director of Food Systems Development for Illinois Farm Bureau.
“It doesn’t have to be free, but if it is, awesome, but if it’s not, it’s just a discounted rate and they explain what the discount is. This is exclusive to non-profits, so not just food banks, but also other non-profits will be able to access this.
“Those who are looking for that food can now use that technology to directly connect with the farmers. The farmers can move that product that doesn’t have a home and those vulnerable communities can now eas ily and securely transact that.”
Nearly 40% of all food in America is wasted. According to Feeding Amer ica, food goes to waste at every stage of food production and distribution — from farmers to packers and shippers, from manufacturers to retailers to our homes.
Each year, 108 billion pounds of food is wasted in the United States. That equates to 130 billion meals and more than $408 billion in food thrown
away each year.
Scavuzzo said this is one of many ongoing efforts the ISGA has been working on and advocating for.
The association, along with Feed ing Illinois, University of Illinois, IFB and Illinois Farmers Market Associa tion, launched the pilot Farm to Food Bank Program in July 2021.
Over a four-month period, food banks purchased nearly 500,000 pounds of fruits and vegetables for five food banks spending over $250,000 with Illinois farmers.
“We’re really excited about the farm-to-food bank program. This provides the opportu nity for farmers to recover some of their costs. The food banks are buying the prod ucts from the farmers at cost. These are seconds that don’t currently have markets and then go into vulnerable popu lations,” Scavuzzo said.
“What’s amazing is Illi nois has the third highest number of farmers markets in the country. We have almost 350 farmers markets within Illinois, and these are all across the state in rural and urban communities where we’re seeing this increased food access component,” Scavuzzo said.
“But it’s also a great incubator site for our farms that are starting to just get started, or for smaller farms. We have farms that go to up to 12 farmers markets a week and others who have one community-based one.
“The economic value of going to a farmers market is huge because it’s a direct-to-consumer buy. So, the farmer gets 100% of the money back, but they also then buy some other things, because when you’re at the farmers market you’re also going to the coffee shop around the corner and going into those retail spaces. So, it’s a great place to drive economics in rural and urban communities.”
Tom C. Doran can be reached at 815-410-2256ortdoran@shawmedia. com. Follow him on Twitter at: @ AgNews_Doran.
Jeff Simmons, president and CEO of Elanco Animal Health, believes plantbased meat will have its place in the mar ket for years to come.
But it certainly doesn’t appear to be a major threat to the livestock industry at the checkout aisle.
Simmons projects worldwide demand for animal protein will continue to grow. And, he believes the livestock industry is poised to help address some of the world’s top challenges, including hunger.
“The three big issues right now are food insecurity, a global health crisis and climate,” Simmons said during the AgriPulse Ag Outlook Forum in Kansas City on Sept. 26. “Animals are connected to all three. I believe they’re the missing piece to some of the world’s biggest problems right now.”
About 60% of consumers around the world aren’t getting enough calories, leading to food insecurity, or they’re get ting the wrong calories, which is contrib
uting to health issues, Simmons said, and boosting animal protein output addresses both those issues.
“Animal protein is one of the hottest food segments the last 3 years, with 50% growth the last 10 years,” Simmons said.
Sales of plant-based meat, conversely, could stay flat through 2022 and remain about 1% of the total protein market through 2027, according to Simmons.
Top consumer preferences when choosing their protein include taste, cost and nutrition, he said.
“Consumers are starting to vote (at the food checkout lane),” Simmons said. “Meat is on demand.”
Erin Borror, vice president of eco nomic analysis for the U.S. Meat Export Federation, said U.S. beef and pork exports reached a record $18.7 billion in 2021 and could push $20 billion this year, adding that beef exports have surpassed $1 billion six of the last seven months.
The U.S. could see even stronger demand for red meat as the world’s top exporter of pork, the European Union, is
projected to reduce output this year by nearly 5% due to disease outbreaks in its herd and policies to reduce animal num bers on farms.
“It’s critical to have a diverse export base,” said Borror, adding that U.S. farm ers must be proactive to maintain their premier animal health status.
Simmons also views climate chal lenges as an opportunity for the livestock industry.
“With a carbon market, it increases
opportunities for ag,” he said. “Cli mate-neutral cattle farms are achievable by 2030,” but get there, farmers must do more than tell their story.
“We need action plans on farms,” he said. “Climate-neutral farming can hap pen. I see us changing the game.”
This story was distributed through a cooperative project between Illinois Farm Bureau and the Illinois Press Association. For more food and farming news, visit FarmWeekNow.com.
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