Farm Stress and Mental Health Resources Available to PA Animal Agriculture Industry

Nov 02, 2022

As part of a Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture effort, funded by a USDA Farm and Ranch Stress Assistance Network (FRSAN) Grant, several free mental wellness and farm stress resources are available to the Pennsylvania agriculture community. The Center for Dairy Excellence, Center for Beef Excellence, Center for Poultry & Livestock, PA Beef Producers Working Group, and Penn State Extension Dairy and Livestock teams have collaborated over the past year to find a baseline snapshot of the state of mental wellness in Pennsylvania agriculture and offer resources and avenues for support.

“We have to continue these conversations to make [mental wellness] an acceptable topic to talk about. We need to prepare our ag business professionals, family members, and rural community members to have these conversations. Hopefully the more we do that, it will continue to be normalized and the stigma and embarrassment will start to fade,” said Ginger Fenton, PhD, Dairy Extension Educator at Penn State Extension. “Employers should also promote access to these services such as telehealth and have conversations with employees to increase awareness of what resources are available.”

To gather the initial baseline snapshot of mental wellness in Pennsylvania agriculture, the group distributed the 2022 Pennsylvania Animal Agriculture Mental Wellness Survey and found several important conclusions from the survey responses:

Mental health is recognized as an important issue by both farmers and agriculture professionals.
Stress symptoms span the entire animal agriculture community.
Fear, financial stress, and family dynamics are the greatest risks associated with stress symptoms.
For those experiencing stress symptoms, obstacles such as cost, embarrassment, availability, and family are present.
Women, younger generations, and larger farms face greater challenges.

To expand on the survey results with more targeted resources and programs, the following farm stress and mental health resources are available:

2022 Mental Wellness Survey Report and Webinar Recording – The full 2022 PA Animal Agriculture Mental Wellness report with survey findings is now available. A webinar recording in video format is also available to use at trainings and other meetings with agriculture professionals. In the webinar recording, Ginger Fenton, PhD, and Gina Pighetti discuss the survey results and next steps for the agriculture community. Visit www.centerfordairyexcellence.org/stress to view the survey results and webinar recording.

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Video: Learning to Wrench From Dad the Hard Way

Harvest is a week out and the farm picked this week to fall apart. The truck needs a battery, the barn curtain's got a problem, and the corn and beans are telling us we're out of time to get it all fixed.

So it's a full day of wrenching. Tork supervises while I get the truck back running, then we're out at the hog barn where one rusted up part has the whole curtain system hung up. Ladder work, cable work, and a little dad-and-son disagreement about the right way to do it. We close it out walking the fields, shelling beans and checking corn, because whether everything's fixed or not, harvest starts when harvest starts.

Chapters: 00:00 Everything breaks the week before harvest 01:00 Tork supervises while I fix the truck 12:30 Out to the barn to find the curtain problem 14:30 One rusty part hung up the whole curtain 20:00 Running the curtain cable from the ladder 24:00 Walking the beans and corn before harvest 26:30 Wrapping up

We're a 6th generation family farm in southeast Iowa showing the real ups and downs of pig farming and row crop farming. No script, just the work. Subscribe and follow along.

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