health consequences of industrialized agriculture for farmers in the United States, The

Human Organization, Fall 1998 by Thu, Kendall M

Roger Strabber: "Family life, stress puts a strain on family life, like in my situation when you've got young children. You're not spending enough time. Even though you're there, you're not with them necessarily. That happens a lot." POSITIVE SIDE OF STRESS

Ralph Lebbing: "Stress isn't necessarily bad always though. It gets you going. It's how you handle it. Some people handle stress very well and enjoy stress. I feel better when I'm busy, but if it's raining, I'm sick. I am, I lay down and might take a nap and just don't feel good. But if you work long hours you just feel better. Don't know why that is, but it is. It's true." Leo Robinson: "I can feel just as much stress if I didn't have to go outside every morning at a certain time, when I sleep in, I can't sleep in, my body wakes me up and I just lay there and worry about the things I've got to do anyway. Those little forms of stress that you don't every notice until you retire or something, they all kind of nag at you every once in a while." ECONOMICS AND STRESS

John Arkus: "I think we will all agree that stress plays a major role in accident problems. Whether it be tiredness or whether it's concerns about the market or whatever. With a worry of monetary return it all ties in. I think sometimes we get preoccupied with other concerns and that's when we aren't careful. That's when things happen. I know I've caught myself, you know, a number of times doing something and I stop and I think now wait a minute you would never do this if I were in my right mind, I wouldn't think about doing that you see."

Discussion

The factors implicated by farmers as being causal for health and injury problems are those which define industrial agriculture. Industrial agriculture is characterized by the replacement of human labor with capital intensive technology, growth of large farms, increase in outside ownership, narrowing of profit margins, increase in off-farm employment, smaller family sizes, use of large machinery, use of fossil-fuel based inputs such as pesticides, and the corresponding decline of rural neighborhoods and communities which provide social support. A recent analysis of statewide farmer injury data in Iowa corroborates the views of these farmers. Farmers with high stress levels and minimal community social support were almost 3.5 times more likely to experience a serious disabling farm injury than the general farm population (Thu, Lasley, Whitten et al. 1997). Moreover, off-farm employment, particularly by the spouse, was the primary predictor of on-farm stress.

The number of farmers continues to decline, with those who remain operating ever-larger farms with dwindling profit margins and less labor. This means longer work hours with more intense and prolonged contact with heavy machinery in isolated working conditions. The dense social fabric of neighborhood farm threshing and work crews of the past has been replaced by the isolationism and solitary working conditions of industrial agriculture. The return on farm investments for farmers is typically around two percent, requiring farming to be coupled with off-farm income which creates an economic treadmill whereby farmers must work more off the farm in order to maintain the financial viability of an expanding farm. These conditions, combined with the high cost of health insurance - e.g., farmers in Iowa pay an average of $4,000 out of pocket for health insurance which covers dwindling rural health care services - have serious consequences for the health and safety of farmers and their families. Moreover, because of the cost and lack of replacement labor, farmers are less likely to seek medical care for health problems and are more likely to discharge themselves from the hospital sooner than would persons in the general population (Mutel and Donham 1983).