An American farm stress group has taken a step beyond listening to callers on a crisis phone line.
In some cases, the Agriwellness Inc. group will go to people’s farms to counsel them.
“We learned it wasn’t enough to have a phone counsellor who was sympathetic, understanding and helpful but not able to go out to the farm families,” said Michael Rosmann, executive director of the seven-state U.S. organization.
At first, the group sent vouchers to farm families allowing them to see counsellors at half the usual $130 an hour rate. Then the group began training its own counsellors to visit farms.
Read Also
Starting a small business comes with legal considerations
This article sets out some of the legal considerations to start a business to sell home-grown product, such as vegetables, herbs, fruit or honey.
Rosmann told a recent conference on rural health that American farmers often can’t afford to buy health insurance or pay high deductibles on some services.
Agriwellness grew out of stress relief efforts that started in the 1980s in North and South Dakota, Nebraska, Kansas, Iowa, Minnesota and Wisconsin, an area that has 21 percent of the United States’ farms. Most of the states operated phone crisis lines but the stress experts realized they had to operate on a regional basis.
In 1999, with federal funding of $1.2 million and another $2 million donated by state governments, a dairy co-operative and volunteers, Agriwellness was born.
Since then it has reached 22,000 farm residents in 500 outreach events. Crisis lines in five states have answered 30,000 calls and 600 people have participated in support groups.
“We now do extensive outreach,” Rosmann said.”We train people to go to the farm homes when the family can’t afford to go. We’re also trying to train health-care workers in agricultural matters. And we’re moving to an annual conference and to build a national centre for rural health.”
He said the major hurdle is a lack of recognition of the importance of farmers in feeding people and growing crops to produce ethanol for fuel.
