From lived experience to lasting support – putting farmer mental health first

By Marnie Wood, Director, Ontario Federation of Agriculture

In March 2019, my husband Brian and I began milking cows in our new dairy barn near Cannington in Durham Region. By October, I was facing a breast cancer diagnosis and by March of the following year, the COVID-19 pandemic had turned the world upside down.

We were brand-new dairy farmers, dealing with many of the same challenges that any new business owner faces, and suddenly we were also navigating illness, uncertainty and isolation on top of the everyday pressures of farming.

We’re raising two kids while building a farm and paying down debt. Like so many farm families, we carry financial pressure, weather risk, market volatility and the weight of responsibility every single day. Add a health crisis to that — and you quickly understand how thin the margin can feel.

That’s why farmer mental health is not theoretical to me, it’s personal.

After some years in the workforce, I had gone back to school to become a psychotherapist and then chose to work almost exclusively with farmers. I saw firsthand how unique and relentless the stressors are: succession planning in multi-generational families, isolation, unpredictable income, trade disruptions, extreme weather and the reality that the cows still need to be milked and livestock still need to be fed, no matter what is happening in your personal life.

Today, in addition to farming, I serve as Chief Operating Officer of the Canadian Centre for Agricultural Wellbeing and have been deeply involved with farmer mental health work in Ontario including suicide prevention programming tailored specifically for farm communities. There are some fantastic services in the province, especially at Agricultural Wellness Ontario, which provide a suite of programs including the Farmer Wellness Initiative, where farmers, their families and their employees can access free, unlimited mental health counselling with professionals who understand agriculture.

When a tragedy happens on a farm, the work doesn’t stop. The animals still need care, crops still need attention and the bills still arrive. And although we have made great strides in recent years in terms of the support and resources now available, we know we need more. That need is real and that is why this work matters so deeply to me.

Last fall, the opportunity came up in my area to run for a position on the provincial board of the Ontario Federation of Agriculture (OFA) and I was subsequently elected to represent farmers from Durham, Peterborough and Kawartha Lakes/Haliburton as an OFA director.

I believe farmers need farmer-created, agriculturally informed mental health supports — programs built by people who understand what it means to watch the weather radar at midnight or worry about passing the farm on to the next generation. Mental health cannot be an add-on; it has to be embedded into how we think about risk management, succession, crisis response and policy.