Farmers Could Be Crushed by Changing Climate – or Not

I’ve been working hard to help hard-pressed farmers develop more income with wind and solar energy on their land. Farmers are in worse shape today than since the crash of 2008, and climate change is not helping.

New Republic:

I’m wearing out. Again.

The first time was around Christmas. For several weeks, I just couldn’t write my weekly column for the newspaper. Eventually I published an explanation, and pointed out to readers that I had just exceeded my capacity to deal with things. I had worn myself out, and misjudged what I could handle.
Gradually I recouped. And I’ve been doing pretty well up until maybe in the last week or so. Because things have just mounted on to the point that it’s become harder. So I need to pay attention to what I preach, and that is to manage my own compassion fatigue.
I serve as a counselor for farmers and ranchers. I’m probably on the phone or on email anywhere from 15 to 25 hours a week, seven days a week, trying to respond to requests for help from all around the country.I only take on the most difficult and unresolvable problems that you could ever see among farm people, where depression has not been successfully treated by any kind of medication or psychiatric help. I try to figure out what to do about them, because—well, I don’t know how else to say this, except that I have a lot of experience doing this. It gets me going.

But the two calls I got today—those just wore me out emotionally.

The first came from a lady whose lover—and I say lover, because both he and she are divorced—is a large farmer. And he’s been told by creditors that he has to negotiate the sale or disposal of some of his farm assets, or they’ll shut him down. He said, I will not go to mediation or court, I’ll kill myself before I have to do that. I will lose. I can’t do this. So she called me in desperation. And we conferred several times to figure out what she can do. 

Jeff Berardelli’s story on this spring’s catastrophic midwest flooding starts at 2:58 below.

The second call came from another farmer. She told me she was desperate, because she didn’t know how to deal with uncertainty in her farming operation. Her email said—I’ll read it to you:
Thank you Dr. Rosmann for getting back to me. I am desperate. The financial strains of the farm are hard to take. Everything is compounded by my emotions….

I experienced a trauma two and a half years ago and I can’t get past it. My brother, with whom I worked on our family farm, committed suicide while I was visiting him in front of me. My husband says I’m changing, and I know I am. It also affects how we interact.
So this woman is looking to me about how to continue, and maybe even gauging whether she needs to join her brother. There is, unfortunately, a contagious effect of suicide.
So that one has taken a lot of time. I responded several times yesterday and tried to call her and did speak for a little bit. She’s pretty brittle. So I contacted another person who lost her husband to suicide, and this woman is willing to talk with the person whose brother ended his life, and to try to offer some hope and options. So I’m hoping we have stopped her from doing something drastic. We just don’t know.

Inside Climate News:

The Farm Bureau is among the most potent political forces in Washington, skillfully parlaying the American farmer into an enduring influence machine. Its agenda encompasses taxes and trade, health insurance and school lunches. The group’s lobbying also touches many environmental issues: water pollution, fracking, biofuels and biodiversity. Conservative to the core, it mirrors the Trump administration’s ideology almost perfectly.

Nowhere do their agendas align more completely—and with more profound consequences—than on the challenge of climate change.
Both oppose any binding international, federal or local actionthat would regulate the emissions of greenhouse gases, or impose a market price or tax on them. Both refuse to embrace the core tenets of climate science.
And on those points, the Farm Bureau rarely compromises.
“They’re like the NRA,” said Andrew Holland, who worked for former Republican Sen. Chuck Hagel of Nebraska. Like the gun lobby, the Farm Bureau derives its clout from member activism. “They get their members ginned up about something and then they call the Hill.”

For decades, the Farm Bureau has derailed climate action, deploying its political apparatus and 6 million members in a forceful alliance with conservative groups and the fossil fuel industry.
It calls itself the “voice” of American agriculture, but the Farm Bureau has left its own members ill-prepared to cope with intensifying droughts, rain, heat and storms that threaten their livelihoods. The group’s agenda has blocked farmers’ opportunity to benefit from the agricultural transformation the climate crisis demands.