Rural Issue

Farmers bombarded by challenges beginning to ask “What’s next?”

The director of rural mental health in Minnesota says many farmers are asking “what’s next?”

Ted Matthews tells Brownfield the list of headwinds facing agriculture is getting longer.

“Everybody thought it was so horrible because of the prices and so on, and now they can’t even get their crop in the field. So there’s a lot of anxiety, depression and frustration out there.”

He says farmers tend to be optimistic by nature, but right now optimism is low.

Matthews has been directing farmers to focus on what they can control.

“The thing that we tend to do is look at all of the things we can’t do. Ya know, I can’t control the weather. I can’t control commodity prices. I can’t, I can’t, I can’t.”

Matthews says farmers can get burnt out dwelling on what they can’t control, leaving no energy to find ways of improving the farm.