Support service for farmer wellness now available

Jan 03, 2022

Counsellors available 24/7 in French and English.

By Andrew Joseph, Farms.com, Photo by Hannah Busing on Unsplash

A new telephone line for mental health support is now up and running, available to all Ontario farmers and farm families.

Via the Farmer Wellness Initiative, the Ontario provincial and federal governments are providing access for up to four free counselling sessions with a mental health professional for all farmers across the province, including members of their family.

All of the mental health professionals have received training to understand the unique needs of Ontario farmers.

Available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year—in both English and French—call 1-866-267-6255 to speak to a counsellor.

Developed and launched by the Canadian Mental Health Association – Ontario Division in partnership with the Ontario Federation of Agriculture (OFA), this service is provided by LifeWorks.

“The Government of Ontario is proud to fund the Farmer Wellness Initiative and to partner with the Ontario Federation of Agriculture to help deliver an important program to provincial farmers,” said Lisa Thompson, Minister of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs. “This initiative will expand Ontario’s mental health supports for farm families to help them cope with the stresses of their work which will allow them to do what they do best; grow and produce some of the best food in the world.”

Peggy Brekvald, President of the OFA added: “The mental health of our farmers is a top priority for the Ontario Federation of Agriculture. Getting this phone line operational is a big first step in a larger, multi-year program that will facilitate easier access to much-needed mental health services for all farmers and their families.”

The program offers:

24/7/365 service intake handled by a designated and fully-trained team who understand a day in the life of a farmer, available in English & French, creating a true partnership and unique care model;
Access to ongoing mental health support services and resources, available up to four sessions per issue per year, for all farming families across Ontario through multiple modalities; the telephone line will soon be followed by a website and an app containing thousands of self-guided support resources;
Integration with provincial and local level resources to provide members with the best level of support available to them, at the first request.

The support line will enter callers into an intake process to arrange counselling sessions with a mental health professional available by phone, virtually, or in-person subject to public health restrictions. All information received through counselling sessions is confidential and in accordance with the Personal Health Information Protection Act (2004).

This initiative is funded by the Canadian Agricultural Partnership program in partnership with Ontario Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs and Agriculture, and Agri-Food Canada.

“Providing farm families across the province with free counselling services and helping connect at-risk farmers with tailored support and resources is a greatly welcomed service in rural Ontario,” summed up Brekveld. “Availability of mental health services has been a big roadblock standing between farmers and their mental wellness. The telephone line is a first step in a process that will add more access points over the coming weeks and months for Ontario farmers and their families to take positive action to support their mental health.”

Ontario farmers who are looking for support, call 1-866-267-6255.

Video: The 15-Year Bet Behind Every New Variety!

Canada is trying to decide how much agricultural research capacity it can afford to lose. Brian Rossnagel believes the better question is whether the country can afford to rebuild it.

The longtime barley and oat breeder makes the case with a simple fact about his profession: the consequences of today’s decisions may not become visible for 10 or 15 years.

“Pick the right parents. That’s the biggest thing,” Rossnagel says. “If you pick the wrong parents, you’re not going to get anywhere—and you don’t know that until 10 years, 15 years later.”

That warning carries particular weight as Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada moves to reduce spending and streamline parts of its science operations. The department’s 2026–27 plan anticipates the loss of approximately 665 positions by 2028–29 and says some research will be reduced where capacity exists in academia or industry. AAFC says the changes will make its science operations more cost-effective over the long term.

For Canada’s seed industry, Rossnagel’s career illustrates what is at stake.

This fall, the retired University of Saskatchewan breeder will be inducted into the Canadian Agricultural Hall of Fame. During his 35-year career at the Crop Development Centre, he helped develop more than 100 barley and oat varieties, including CDC Austenson—one of Western Canada’s most widely grown feed barleys. His induction recognizes not only those varieties, but the collaboration and research system that made them possible.

Rossnagel is quick to emphasize that none of it was the work of one person.

“The first thing I thought about was all the other people who contributed to whatever success I and my program had over the years,” he says. “We know that it’s not an individual who does this. It’s a group—a team.”

That team extends well beyond the breeder whose name appears beside a variety. It includes technicians, pathologists, quality specialists, statisticians, regional testing sites, seed growers and industry partners. It also includes the breeders who came before and those who will carry the germplasm forward.

CDC Fraser barley, for example, moved through three breeding careers. Its parents came from Brian Harvey’s program. Rossnagel advanced the material after Harvey retired, and Aaron Beattie later guided it through registration and release.

That kind of handoff is normal in plant breeding. The person who makes the original cross may never see the resulting variety reach farmers.

It also explains why lost research capacity cannot simply be switched back on when budgets improve.

“If you shut it off, it’s very, very difficult—and particularly costly—to start it up again,” Rossnagel says. “If you have to start from scratch, it’s going to be at least 10 years before anybody notices whether you’re getting anything done or not.”

The concern is not simply how many experimental lines Canada can process. Modern equipment, statistical tools and genetic technologies allow today’s breeding programs to evaluate tens of thousands of lines—far more than Rossnagel could handle when he entered the field in the early 1970s.

But efficiency and automation do not generate every idea.

“If you pare back down, and instead of having six or seven individual scientists concentrating on wheat breeding, you go down and say three people could handle all this, well, that’s half the ideas gone,” he says. “Particularly if you happen to lose the three people who had the really neat and innovative ideas, boy, that’s a problem.”

It is a timely distinction for Canadian agriculture. Consolidating programs may preserve the volume of material moving through a system, at least initially. It may not preserve the diversity of thinking, regional knowledge or willingness to pursue unconventional crosses.

That regional knowledge matters because Canadian agriculture is not one uniform production environment. A variety suited to southern Alberta may face different disease, moisture and maturity pressures than one grown in Manitoba, Ontario or Atlantic Canada.

“Agriculture is applied biology,” Rossnagel says. “Biology, all around the Earth, moves from the poles to the equator. It does not move from Newfoundland to B.C. like politics do.”