![]() We are walking through the wet grass toward the cornfield behind his house, when he cranes his head. He has the slightest limp in 1990, during the oat harvest, he lost four of his toes “in a moment of carelessness” with the grain combine, an event he describes as life-changing. When the rain breaks, Mike pulls on muck boots over his pants, and we go outside. Mike opened a psychology practice, Marilyn worked as a nurse, and they raised two children. Once back in Iowa, the Rosmanns farmed corn, soybeans, oats, hay, purebred cattle, chickens and turkeys. I need to go take care of farmers, because nobody else does,” says Rosmann. “I told them farmers are an endangered species, and we need them for our sustenance. When he told his colleagues that he was trading academia for farm life, they were incredulous. In 1979, Mike and Marilyn left their teaching positions at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville and bought 190 acres in Harlan, Iowa – near Mike’s boyhood farm. Mike appears a midwestern Santa Claus – glasses perched on a kind, round face a head of white hair and a bushy white moustache. Marilyn is baking cranberry bars in the brightly lit kitchen. On this overcast day, the farmhouse is warm and immaculately decorated. It’s been raining all morning – big gray swaths – and we are standing in the entryway of the Rosmanns’ house. I aimed to explore our country’s fervent celebration of the agrarian, and yet how, despite the fact that we so desperately need farmers for our survival, we often forget about their wellbeing.įour years after contacting Rosmann as a farmer, I am traveling across Iowa with a photographer in an attempt to understand the suicide crisis on America’s farms. In 2014, I left my marriage and my farm, and I began to write. ![]() ![]() In 2016, nearly half of Iowa’s 23 million acres of farmland was planted in field corn. The US farmer suicide crisis echoes a much larger farmer suicide crisis happening globally: an Australian farmer dies by suicide every four days in the UK, one farmer a week takes his or her own life in France, one farmer dies by suicide every two days in India, more than 270,000 farmers have died by suicide since 1995. Rosmann and other experts add that the farmer suicide rate might be higher, because an unknown number of farmers disguise their suicides as farm accidents. This, however, could be an underestimate, as the data collected skipped several major agricultural states, including Iowa. “The emotional wellbeing of family farmers and ranchers is intimately intertwined with these changes.”Ī study by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) suggested that male farmers in 17 states took their lives at a rate two times higher than the general population in 2012 and 1.5 times higher in 2015. “Farming has always been a stressful occupation because many of the factors that affect agricultural production are largely beyond the control of the producers,” wrote Rosmann in the journal Behavioral Healthcare. I remember panic when a late freeze threatened our crop, the constant fights about money, the way light swept across the walls on the days I could not force myself to get out of bed. We worked 80 hours a week, but we couldn’t afford to see a dentist, let alone a therapist. We were growing food, but couldn’t afford to buy it. I was depressed, unhappily married, a new mom, overwhelmed by the kind of large debt typical for a farm operation. Once upon a time, I was a vegetable farmer in Arizona. And for 40 years, he has worked to understand why farmers take their lives at such alarming rates – currently, higher rates than any other occupation in the United States. He often answers phone calls from those in crisis. Rosmann, an Iowa farmer, is a psychologist and one of the nation’s leading farmer behavioral health experts. “Mrs Peters, I am so glad you called me.” ![]() “My husband died of suicide on May 12th.” When she dialed the number, Dr Mike Rosmann answered. She called 911 immediately, but by the time the authorities located his truck, Matt had taken his life. At dinnertime, his truck was gone and Matt wasn’t answering his phone. Ginnie felt an “oppressive sense of dread” that intensified as the day wore on. “And then I remember thinking … and take you where? Who can help me with this? I felt so alone.” “I remember thinking ‘I wish I could pick you up and put you in the car like you do with a child,’” Ginnie says. He hadn’t slept in three nights and was struggling to make decisions. Matt worried about the weather and worked around the clock to get his crop in the ground on time. It was planting season, and stress was high. On the morning of his last day,, Matt stood in the kitchen of their farmhouse. “My dearest love,” it began, and continued for pages. Ginnie pauses at the desk where she found her husband Matt’s letter on the night he died. ![]()
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