INDIANA (WPTA21) - “It is vitally important that we help take care of those who feed us everyday,” Angela Sorg told ABC21’s Digging Deeper team. The Purdue Extension counselor is talking specifically about Indiana’s farmers. She’s part of the group’s farm stress team, which launched in 2018 due to an increase of suicide rates among Hoosier farmers. “If I lose my job tomorrow, I can go find another job,” she explained, “because my identity is not so tied up into my job. I don’t eat, sleep, and breathe it — but for a farmer, they eat sleep and breathe the farm.”

Sorg, along with health and human sciences educator Rachel Dillhoff, have been working together on educational programming that they hope accomplishes two goals: bringing awareness to mental health, and reducing stigma among rural communities. And though most, if not everyone, can relate to what it feels like to be under pressure — farmers work in the most intense environments. In fact, the CDC describes agriculture as “high-risk and high-stress”.

“We also began to see an uptick in farmers, either completing suicide or discussing suicide, with family members,” Sorg added. “Our communities are unsure or uncomfortable on how to have those conversations.”

And farm stressors are in high number. They include:

- Rising costs and inflation (i.e. fertilizer costs are up 200-300% from last year)
- Weather (i.e. excessive rainfall in northeast Indiana leads to mold and fungal growth in corn and soybeans)
- Diseases (i.e. tar spot, which has been reported in almost every Indiana county, can lead to a $130-400 loss per acre of corn)
- Harvest (concern over enough time, issues, and equipment breakdowns before harvesting fields)
- Family (standard family stressors compounded with daily struggles of the job)

But perhaps the biggest concern, is around the homestead legacy. “If there is a farm loss, there is an identity loss. We hear that from our farmers all the time,” Sorg said. “’Why couldn’t I keep it continued, because grandpa did? My dad did it. My mom did it. Everyone in my family did it — why couldn’t I do it? I have failed my future children and my future grandchildren. ‘”

And in a booming agricultural state like Indiana, the concern is widespread. “According to the ISDA, there is about 57,000 farmers or farm operations in the state of Indiana,” Dillhoff told us. “They said about 96% of those farms are family-owned and operated.”

Several years ago, the dairy industry took a big hit. It faired even worse during the pandemic. “I saw stories where they couldn’t sell to their normal places they would sell to,” she continued, “because the schools weren’t in session — so what are you going to do with all that? You hear about people having to dump all that milk. What is that going to look like down the road?”

Drive south off Fort Wayne on U.S. 27 and you’ll pass Kunkel Dairy. The Decatur homestead has been managed by the same family for nearly 175 years. Fred Kunkel made the tough decision to stop producing dairy, to keep the farm profitable. “In the spring of 2019, that’s when we kind of put our plan together. What we were looking at as far as shutting it down,” he detailed. “I just told my son he’d be better off getting a job with benefits. The facilities are old… the milk industry wasn’t giving us enough to stay in business.”

Even before slimming down operations, the Kunkels have been wholly dedicated to the land. “We just do it because we love it,” he said. “70 hours a week is a normal dairy schedule — because we work seven days a week!” For over three decades, he would begin his day at 2:30 a.m. Before the sun rose, his cows would already be milked. Then he would prepare for his bus route — a job for the local school district that made sure his family had health insurance. Kunkel would take breaks for breakfast and lunch, make a couple more trips to the farm, and pickup his students from school. His day would often end around 7 p.m. No days off, and no vacations.

He says he’s since slowed down. There are no cows to milk, but Kunkel farm still has hundreds of acres of corn and soybeans. They also produce hay, care for alpacas, and raise cows to be used for beef. And he still drives that school bus. “I don’t get up until 5 o’clock in the morning anymore,” he laughed. “I’m going to say this for about every farmer I know: farmers never retire.”

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