Who’s looking out for our farmers’ mental health?
One quarter of the global labour force works in agriculture, and they know it’s a stressful business. As agriculture becomes increasingly unpredictable, it’s essential to support the mental well-being of our farmers.
In this episode, we examine the psychological pressures facing farmers, from climate-related stress to market instability. We also highlight community-based solutions from StrongMinds in Uganda and Compañeros en Salud in Mexico, and speak with Dr. Britt Wray about the broader mental health impacts of the climate crisis.
Find out more: Who’s looking out for our farmers’ mental health? - Episode 92
Transcript
This is Farms. Food. Future. – a podcast that’s Good for You, Good for the Planet, and Good for Farmers.
Brought to you by the International Fund for Agricultural Development.
::Welcome to Episode 92 - I’m Brian Thomson.
::And co-presenting this edition, I’m Michelle Tang.
::One-quarter of the global labour force works in agriculture – that’s roughly 900 million people whose livelihoods depend on farming.
::Farming feeds the world… but behind the crops, the markets, and the food on our plates, there’s another reality.
::Farming is stressful.
::And unpredictable… think volatile markets, erratic weather, long hours often spent in isolation.
::And as the climate crisis intensifies, many farmers are finding themselves under even greater pressure.
Which begs the question: who’s looking out for the farmers’ mental health?
::In this episode, we’ll hear from StrongMinds in Uganda, where group therapy is helping rural people overcome depression and adapt to the challenges of farming in a changing climate.
::
We’ll speak to Compañeros en Salud in Mexico, who are supporting coffee-growing families in Chiapas with health care that includes mental health.
::And we’ll be joined by Dr. Britt Wray, a leading researcher and author who explores how the climate crisis impacts our mental health and what that means for farmers worldwide.
::As always, don’t forget we also want to hear from you – what you think about our stories and who you want us to be talking to – so please get in touch with us at podcasts at ifad.org.
::You can also subscribe to this podcast via your favourite podcast platform and please don’t forget to rate us.
:Coming up, we have Vincent Mujune from StrongMinds Uganda
::You’re listening to Farms. Food. Future. with me Brian Thomson, and Michelle Tang.
In rural Africa, as many as 9 in 10 farmers are smallholders. Their work is tough, and the mental strain is real.
::StrongMinds is a social enterprise that’s making mental health care more accessible, especially for farmers.
::Their group talk therapy model has already reached over a million people across Africa, most of them smallholder farmers.
::Our reporter Rosa González spoke to Vincent Mujune, StrongMinds’ Country Director in Uganda, about how their approach works and what it has meant for one farmer, Sarah, a refugee navigating depression and climate shocks.
::Welcome, Vincent. Thank you for joining us today.
::Thank you. Thank you very much, Rosa, for having me and I'm excited to be speaking on this podcast today.
::Can you start by telling us about strong minds? What led to the creation of the organisation and how does your approach to group therapy work in practise?
::Strong minds is a social enterprise whose mission is to democratise access to mental health care. For people with depression globally, because we believe that good mental health is the foundation for thriving families and communities, we deliver a culturally adopted model of six weeks group interpersonal toxic therapy delivered by lay community workers, trained and supported by strong minds, and so most of these groups include your basic community health workers, volunteers of social groups in the community and people with lived experiences for depression and generalised anxiety.
ong minds started its work in:00:04:58 Rosa
Why is mental health support so critical for smallholder farmers and women, especially in these communities?
::In climate change, affected communities of Uganda, many people are trapped in a kind of a vicious cycle where they struggle to have food security. They end up with depression and climate anxiety as a result of that nexus. I would like to share a lived example of a female smallholder farmer called Sarah who is a refugee living in a refugee settlement in Adjumani District of Uganda. She came from South Sudan. With her husband and their four children, due to the rising state of insecurity in their country of origin, their experience of living in the refugee settlement came with numerous challenges related to their survival. And the realities of starting life in a foreign country, intimate partner violence set in. And all these were wrapped up with a very bad experience of mental ill health. As a woman, Sarah lived under continued pressure about her well-being. About the well-being of her family especially. Of her four children and to this end, she took up smallholder farming within the settlement to help her grow more food to supplement their inadequate food rations. Sarah's farming enterprise was met with challenges such as prolonged droughts and unpredictable rain patterns.
So, what Sarah and her husband did not know was that the impact of all of these major life transitions, coupled with unresolved grief due to the loss of both her parents during the conflict in South Sudan and her separation from her extended family, which acted as a support system for her, would actually trigger depression and anxiety in her. In such experiences, we are responsible for her psychological and emotional breakdown, which eventually happened.
This, unfortunately, was culturally misunderstood. For her being lazy, unhelpful, rebellious, under disgrace and through our community based group therapy, we've seen clients like Sarah develop stronger coping mechanisms for daily stresses of life. Like living in a climate change affected community, such as sharing food during times of scarcity, offering free labour to one another during cultivation seasons with treatments our clients develop psychological resilience and the ability to adapt in the face of continuing environmental and climatic challenges. For a mother like Sarah, whose psychological and emotional resilience was significantly strained by triggers of depression and anxiety. The StrongMinds group talk therapy sessions help her to find practical solutions from peers and armed her with essential life skills to remain free from depression and anxiety amid all these recurring challenges of life as a mother, as a wife, as a refugee, as a smallholder farmer, and most of all, as the main pillar of support for her young family.
::Thank you. And finally, what message would you like to leave with our audience when it comes to mental health and farmers.
::Based on all these experiences, then are some of the areas that we feel could could be taken as a clear call for action for what needs to change in the way things are, our call is to governments and stakeholders supporting vulnerable groups to consider integrating mental health and well-being perspectives in their policies and programmatic approaches for better outcomes. A multi sectoral approach to mental health remains A viable and profitable option for the people's well-being. We also believe that health is made at home and is only taken to hospital for repair when it breaks down and it is important that we build strengths for good mental health. Within the communities where people live, when the mental well-being of vulnerable populations is prioritised, the economic outcomes of those people are more likely to improve significantly and I strongly believe that the reverse is also true.
::Thank you, Vincent and Rosa. You can find out more about their work at strongminds.org.
::What Vincent described shows that the stress and grief of climate change doesn't stop at the physical level.
::And with the right support, farmers can build resilience not just in their fields, but also in their minds.
::That's something our next guest, Doctor Britt Wray, has been studying closely.
::You’re listening to episode 92 of Farms. Food. Future. with me Michelle Tang and Brian Thomson.
Britt Wray is a researcher, author, and broadcaster whose work focuses on the intersection of climate change and mental health.
::She’s written widely about climate anxiety, ecological grief, and the psychological toll of living through a climate crisis.
::And importantly, her work also points as towards ways of building resilience and transforming that anxiety into meaningful action.
::She spoke to our reporter Rosa González about how these issues play out in farming communities, and what development organisations can do to better support farmers’ mental health.
::Welcome Britt. Your research shows psychological climate impacts outweigh physical ones by 40 to 1. How does this show up in farming communities?
::Sure. So with the climate crisis, we're seeing increased exposures to a variety of direct threats to the life and livelihoods of farmers. Of course, we know that with the warming of the atmosphere from activities such as burning fossil fuels, then we're seeing more droughts. We're also seeing more floods. And what happens when your livelihood is dependent upon raising crops at certain times of the year? And then a drought comes through for many years on end, and you can't actually harvest those crops. And you have to take on greater loans in order to keep your farming practice running. But you're not able to actually get the crops that are your products that you sell in the markets, and then you can't pay back those loans and you become more overwhelmed by debt. And this can lead to such chronic stress that you can end up as a farmer in a state of despair. And we've seen increased suicidality amongst farming communities dealing with intense year on year drought. We've also seen the same with farmers who are living with floods, where floods come through, and they ruin the crop through a different mechanism that's tied to climate change. And it's the same kind of cycles of financial insecurity increased hardship, anxiety, depression, despair and sometimes even suicide. So this, of course, is a very, very difficult situation to be contending with when we also understand that we're not taking the collective actions at the global power holding levels that are needed to stop these impacts from getting more frequent and ferocious going forward. And that can also bring up existential distress about, will I be able to pass this tradition on to my children in a long line of family farmers, for instance, which is really about attacking a person's sense of place in the world and identity, and can even chip away at meaning in life. And so we hear about different forms of, of grief related to this process of the farming traditions becoming harder to pass on or simply sustain. And also livestock, you know, livestock during extreme heat waves can be killed in mass numbers or when there's a lot of flooding, a lot of, let's say, young immature livestock like kids, baby goats. I was just reading an account of a farmer talking about, um, on their goat farm that they lost an entire generation of the goats that they were raising because of a flood. And again, that is that is investment that becomes hard to recover from. And especially when you're dealing with these kinds of compounding threats where there might be flood after flood or heat waves and floods and year on year challenges just become a little bit too tough to bear in some instances when this is happening. So. Yeah, there's a lot going on. And there's also a difference between whether you are a farmer who owns the farm or a farm worker who has less security and is simply at the whim of what's going on in the farm, where you're working, where you might be let go of very quickly and face mass uncertainty in your livelihood. You might lose your housing, um, you might already be a migrant and then be pushed into further precarity as a result of climate impacts, debilitating the sustainability of the farm where you're working. So yeah, it comes in many shapes and forms, but essentially we're seeing across both the global South and the global North that farmers are some of the most impacted by the mental health and emotional challenges of the climate crisis.
::And how can we transform climate anxiety into effective action rather than paralysis?
::A lot of it is about community, resilience and understanding that the way that we are going to protect our mental health going through this increasingly turbulent time on the planet is by connecting with others is by investing in the social ties and the strengths of our social relationships. Being able to achieve shared goals with the people who are around us is social capital. And that means we have to know how to follow and lead and cooperate despite our differences and not get tied up in, you know, polarised, vitriolic divisions within our communities and actually work together. Because research going back decades shows that when we have, we are in a social matrix where and we have high social capital and connectedness, our mental health is protected even in times of disaster, we come out the other side of these acute and traumatic events with lower anxiety, depression, PTSD, suicidality, substance abuse, and so on. Then, if we're living in a more isolated and fragmented way, there's something. It almost feels like there's this magical layer of protection that comes it's, you know, there's reasons for it. There are mechanisms for it, but. How effective it is to really invest in getting to know your neighbours and being part of the community and how this helps to save lives and protect our mental health and contribute to rebuilding faster on the far side of disasters. That's that's a massive mind shift, which is important to to learn more about and to think about what it means for you, because we're living also at a time where, especially in many industrialised society. People are reporting more loneliness and social isolation than ever before. More people are living alone than ever before, and there are these invisible social architectures that are really what are going to help us make lemonade from these lemons as we go through the decades ahead. And then you know that that's that's an aspect of being mindful. Of how you are experiencing your life as a social creature. But mindfulness can be applied to all kinds of aspects of how we. Can help ourselves cope in the climate crisis, being mindful of when we're at our edge, what our nervous system is doing and feeling like, how we can calm ourselves and bring restore a sense of peace or brightness of mind. If we are really spiralling with challenging times through contemplative practises and mindfulness and meditation, and as mentioned earlier, land based healing. And there's so much to be said. About eco therapy and spending time in nature, which can really help with mood regulation and stress regulation and these kinds of things. So yeah, I guess a metaphorical approach to mindfulness, but in a deep way that involvescommunity resilience, as well as being attentive to your own individual needs.
::Thank you, Britt and Rosa, you can visit brittray.com For more information.
::And don't forget to check out our latest episodes in episode 89, we Celebrate Youth Day featuring young people who are shaking things up with big ideas and global teamwork.
::Then in episode 90 we look at how we keep feeding more people with less land, less water and an increasingly unpredictable climate.
::And in episode 91, we talked about what it takes to mobilise political will, strengthen citizen action and reimagine rural finance so that food security and rural communities remain high on the international agenda. With the ONE campaign and Global Citizen.
::Coming up now, we visit Chiapas, Mexico, where Compañeros en Salud is working side by side with coffee farmers to bring health care and especially mental health care to rural communities.
::You’re listening to Farms. Food. Future. with me Brian Thomson, and Michelle Tang.
Compañeros en Salud is part of the global Partners In Health networkand in Chiapas. They work to strengthen rural health systems.
::That means everything from medical services to training local health workers and making sure farmers and their families aren't left behind when it comes to mental health.
::Carolina Guzmán spoke to our reporter Rosa González about what mental health challenges coffee farmers face, and how they’re addressing them.
::Hello, Carolina and thank you very much for joining us today from Chiapas in Mexico to tell us about the work that you're doing with Companeros in Salon.
::I’m really glad that you found us. It’s not always easy. Chiapas is a very large state, and sadly there’s also a lot of extreme poverty here, including poverty in health, especially in very remote communities that are hard to reach. The need for health care is huge. I’m a community volunteer working with Compañeros en Salud, and I’ve been doing this for about 12 years now, maybe more. The organization opened the door for many of us, and for me especially. I come from a family with very little access to health care… lots of chronic illnesses like diabetes. Through this organization, I’ve been able to learn so many things we just didn’t know about in places like ours.
::And how would you say Compañeros en Salud has changed or benefited the lives of the coffee producers that live here in Chiapas?
::Life here in the community has really changed. For example, for the families who live up in the hills with their little coffee plots, it’s been a blessing, a very big and positive change. Coffee farmers, many of us don’t really know all that it takes to cultivate coffee. We only know it once it’s in our cups. But producing coffee, maintaining a plot, takes a lot of work and costs a lot. When it’s harvest time, people simply don’t have the luxury of getting sick. They say, “we just don’t have the right to get sick”, because if they stop working, the harvest is lost.
::And as a mental health caregiver with companies that I love, what would you say are the main mental health challenges that the coffee farmers face?
::I think the biggest challenges for coffee farmers, or anyone working their plots, are worry and anxiety. Coffee is something you either harvest… or you lose. Here in Chiapas, people from neighbouring Guatemala usually come to help with the harvest. But now, because of insecurity, they often don’t want to travel here. That creates huge worry and anxiety. It was the same during COVID, when people couldn’t gather. Farmers would ask: “What’s going to happen to the harvest? What are we going to do?” That uncertainty caused a lot of distress.
That’s when people came to us for help. As companions, we listen, we check how the person is doing, and if they need medical care or medication, we help arrange it. Sometimes it’s just about being there, listening, giving them that little push we call “a helping hand.” Because when someone is overwhelmed, they can’t think clearly.
I remember one woman in particular. She was a widow, and her children had migrated to the U.S. She became ill with mental health issues because she worried so much. Imagine… no husband, no children around, no one to help. She would say, “Who’s going to go to the ranch? Who’s going to bring supplies on horseback? Who’s going to see if the coffee is ready, who’s going to dry it, wash it, grind it? I don’t have the strength anymore.” She was in her sixties, and the work was too heavy for her. Coffee takes a whole family to manage… everyone works, from the youngest to the oldest. For her, it was impossible alone, and her anxiety grew so much she became very unwell.
We brought her to the clinic, the doctor saw her, gave her medicine, and we visited her every few days, every week, to check on her. She lived completely alone. Just having company helped her a lot. We also asked her to think of people she could trust. Little by little, she remembered some. We even contacted one of her sons in the U.S. to see how he could support her. With time, and thanks to help from the community and even the local churches, she was able to harvest her coffee. Today she’s doing well, and we still visit her. We don’t say goodbye to patients… they’re our neighbours, part of our community. We keep an eye on them. They’re never left alone.
::And you also have an initiative called the Women Circle. So what do you do in the women's circle and what teachings do you feel are most helpful for the community?
::Wow. In the women’s circle, every season we focus on something different. We sit together in a real circle, and we ask: “What do we want to do this year?” This year, this season, the women wanted to be more active… to move their bodies more. Because we see a lot of health problems here like obesity and overweight. So, we started drinking more water instead of sugary drinks, doing breathing and relaxation exercises, walking in the forest or by the river.
I also have a group of about 80 people working on home gardens, planting trees, and even growing our own coffee plants adapted to the local climate, instead of depending on outside seedlings. No transgenics. I think people are learning more each day about how to improve our health and how to live better if we want to continue here on planet Earth.
::Thank you, Carolina and Rosa to find out more about their work, you can visit Compañeros en Salud dot.MX
::And that brings us to the end of this episode.
Thanks as always to our producers and editor here in Rome, Rosa González, Francesco Manetti, Francesca Primavilla and Katie White.
::But most of all thanks to you for listening to this episode of Farms Food Future brought to you by the International Fund for Agricultural Development.
::We’ll be back in two weeks to mark Rural Women’s Day with the Dandelion Project and other inspiring voices.
::And on the last Monday in October tune in for something tasty on World Food Day!
::Stay tuned!
::This is farms, food, future, a podcast that's good for you, good for the planet, and good for farmers brought to you by the International Fund for Agricultural Development. You can find out more about all of our stories at www dot ifad dot org forward Slash podcasts. Remember, we want to hear from you.
::What you think about our stories and who you want us to be talking to? So please get in touch at podcast at Ifad Dot Org send us your voice or text messages to this address and we'll be happy to play you out in the next show. Also, don't forget to subscribe to this podcast via your favourite podcast platform, and please rate us and once again we'll be trying to be good for you, good for the planet, and good for the farmers. Until then from me, Brian Thompson and the team here at IFAD. Thanks for listening.
