- [Narrator] Coming up tonight on "Chasing The Dream".

- So, a lot of what I do are the outside trainings to the people that work with farmers, the extension agents, the milk truck drivers, the veterinarians, the nutritionists that come to the farm and provide them with a common language, a baseline knowledge of how to talk about mental health.

(soft music) - Regenerative agriculture recognizes the fact that nature kind of knows what it's doing.

We work with the natural principles of ecosystems that all ecosystems follow, and we try to use those principles in ways that allow us to produce a clean healthy food while restoring the fertility of the soil and the functionality of those ecosystems, which really we all depend on.

(soft music) - [Reporter] WSKG thanks the following for their support of this project: The Conrad and Virginia Klee Foundation, The Corning Incorporated Foundation, M&T Bank, UHS and viewers like you.

Thank you.

- Hello, and thanks for tuning in tonight.

It's often been said that farming is the profession of hope.

For the nearly 60,000 families and individuals who work every day on farms across New York state.

That hope can be the single candle that dispels the darkness.

For farmers facing hard times, that hope can be difficult to find which is where organizations like New York FarmNet come in.

New York FarmNet works to provide farmers with help when it is needed most.

- I would say, farm has a lot to offer.

And there is hope.

(laughs) I mean, even though you might feel hopeless.

- Despair or it's like how do I get out of this mess?

What do I do?

There's light at the end of the tunnel.

I mean, there's a solution usually.

- FarmNet came and they're like, it's okay.

There's a lot more people out there like you who want to do this but don't know how, or they're afraid.

It was really amazing for them to come here.

I think they made me cry because seriously, without them I could never have achieved my dreams.

It's amazing.

(soft music) - We help farms in New York State in times of crisis, in times of growth and in times of opportunity.

Our program was started in response to the 1980s farm crisis.

And farmers were dying by suicide.

It never stopped.

It's just gotten worse in the past few years.

- We kind of did it without them.

I mean, financially, if we had to pay for FarmNet there's no way we would have gotten where we need to be.

(soft music ) - I think the best thing that I've learned from FarmNet is just to look at a business plan, look at the structure and just get into the numbers and make sure that whatever the enterprise is, it makes sense.

There's not a lot of knowledge out there for farmers, and they're really busy actually farming to have someone come in to your farm and sit down with you and go over all of those details.

- We've learned how to take the cow from 50 pounds of milk to 80 pounds of milk.

We've learned how to grow corn by the hundreds of thousands of acres.

Nobody ever sat down to figure out is this profitable or not?

That's where I think I can help.

- So not intimidating, you think, oh, we gotta, the first meeting you're nervous to know these people.

You're gonna tell them all your nitty gritty things.

And they're wonderful, they're so nonjudgmental.

So ready to listen.

Honest too, but very compassionate I would say.

- It's been a really enjoyable experience for me.

I come from a dairy farm background everything that we do with the farm that changes over time.

We've had to figure out things as well with our own farm.

I can put myself in their shoes pretty easily.

I'm right there with them.

If they're having a hard time with something like the dairy milk prices or something, I've felt that as well.

- It's really a really wonderful thing to be able to provide a family or a farmer who is in need especially if they're in dire financial straits a free service where we go to them.

So we will come and meet with them around the kitchen table, we'll meet with them in the barn wherever they feel comfortable and just walk them through look at things from a different way and provide a different perspective.

- I think the fact that we're confidential they know that they can share anything, and no one else is gonna know is really helpful.

(soft music) - FarmNet has gave us that Avenue, so we could explain to people, this is where we are, this is what we want to do to grow.

(soft music) - I mean the services FarmNet has to offer is a great thing.

I mean, it gives you a hope.

(soft music) - Welcome back.

I'm joined now by Kate Downes, the Outreach Director for New York FarmNet, Kate holds a master's degree in sustainable agriculture and rural development from University College in Dublin, Ireland and a bachelor's degree from SUNY Cobleskill.

Kate's work is shaped by a passion for community and an agricultural connection spanning back to her childhood.

Kate lives in central New York with her husband, two kids, cat, dog, two rabbits and seven chickens.

Thanks for joining us, Kate.

- Thanks Natasha.

- So let's start by talking a little bit about your work at FarmNet and what brought you to that work?

- Sure, so I'm one of four team members in the main office at Cornell university.

And what I do primarily is give presentations develop presentations for cooperative extension offices for the suicide prevention center of New York state.

For really anyone in New York who's interested in learning about mental health in agriculture and how they can better support the agricultural community.

- So that's interesting.

That's an interesting connection that some people might be surprised to hear about your work with farmers includes this mental health piece.

Can you talk a little bit more about that?

- Having grown up in a farming family, my uncle had a small dairy farm.

Throughout his whole life he struggled with chronic illness and depression and I watched him struggle with that.

And you know, at about six years ago unfortunately he lost that battle and died by suicide.

And it was really his death that spurred my interest as well as my own personal experiences, dealing with depression and anxiety that there had to be more out there.

There's gotta be a better way to support our farmers in a different way you know, not just financially but also emotionally in supporting their wellbeing.

So that really led me to FarmNet.

And because that's what FarmNet does we provide that support to farm families and farmers and agri-businesses not just through financial guidance, but also through personal wellbeing management and stress management.

So it was really that holistic approach that drew me toward the organization.

- Right, right.

And so I think what you're saying might be a little surprising to folks who may be watching.

So can you talk a little bit about some of the stressors that farmers face that make mental health very, very important?

- Really everything farmers do, are... Everything is beyond their control unfortunately, you know, they're so reliant on the weather they're reliant on the price of milk and what they'll get paid for at the end of the day.

So they don't get to set those prices.

They're totally at the whim of the markets.

So, and which are ultimately driven by consumers and consumers change their needs all the time.

Farming is a really isolating job.

It's not just geographically isolated but it's also socially isolated, farmers don't really leave the farm on a given day cause it's really hard.

They're working 24/7 almost.

There's those times that farmers put in 80 hour weeks and that's they don't think anything of it, dairy farmers and farmers in general don't really get to take a vacation either because they can't leave the animals or when it's nice out so they've got to put the crops and work in the field and all that.

They've got a lot to do in any given day.

And usually they are the boss the main labor, the mechanic, they're all those things.

And they work with their family.

(laughs) - That's a stressor.

- That is a really big stressor.

96% of our farms are family operated.

So, and there's usually multiple generations working side by side so you'll have grandpa who's in his eighties working with his 50 year old son.

And then the 30 year old daughter who wants to come back to the family farm, that can be really hard because everybody has their own ideas of how things might look and how they should run to move the farm forward.

- And then just access, right?

Because rural communities we know lack access to- - So many things.

- Yeah, so many things.

But definitely mental health services.

- Yes so our rural areas fall into a mental health professional shortage area.

Most of New York state, actually I was looking the other day in 51 of our 62 counties in New York state fall into a health professional shortage area.

So we just don't have the access.

And while tele-health is a great tool to help remove that barrier not all those areas have appropriate broadband access.

So even though they might be able to access it at home at the kitchen table the infrastructure isn't there to support it.

So that's really challenging not to mention, some farmers don't have health insurance.

- Right.

- So there's a lot of barriers that really come in to accessing care when they might think about it.

But a lot of times they just don't think about stress as something that impacts them.

They think of it almost as a white color as an urban problem.

This isn't something that we deal with we just pick ourselves up by our bootstraps and keep going, keep plowing ahead.

- Well, there's that image of the stoic farmer, right?

- Always, yeah.

To a fault.

(laughs) - Right.

And so, what are some of the specific things that you do in your role with FarmNet that supports farmers?

- So a lot of what I do are the outside trainings to the people that work with farmers, the extension agents, the milk truck, the veterinarians, the nutritionists that come to the farm and provide them with a common language a baseline knowledge of how to talk about mental health 'cause we as a society, as a whole are not good about talking mental health, so by educating them through these different workshops they're not long.

They're pretty short, but they really give folks that knowledge and help them understand it's okay to talk about mental health.

We need to talk about mental health.

Here's how to do it.

Here's how to ask those really hard questions especially around suicide, because that is so taboo but we're slowly making headway in talking about mental health in agriculture and the more we talk about it the less stigma there is, the less shame there is.

And that's really, really critical.

- And farming is a challenging profession - Yeah.

- as you discussed.

- Yes.

- But also COVID has made things even more challenging.

Can you talk a little bit - Sure.

- about that?

- Yeah, COVID has really shined a light on the challenges of our food systems.

So when school shut down, when restaurants shut down our food system wasn't able to shift quickly enough to support the needs of our consumers.

So we received milk shortages in store, even though we were watching milk getting dumped on the news.

Like that was a really hard thing to especially for farmers Like, I'm doing all this work and then I'm having to dump my milk.

That's absurd.

That's really frustrating.

So it was just watching that really slow pivot trying to happen.

Families were really struggling, are really struggling, we're still in it because now the kids are home from school.

You're dealing with a couple of kids, maybe more does everybody have a computer to learn correctly or learn what they need to learn in a way that works for that child?

And so everybody's just really stressed to the max.

Farmers that have livestock and raise pigs and beef cows, the meat processing facilities are backed up for months.

So people can't even get in to get their meat processed.

So there's a backup in our food system there.

So some farmers are having a hard time, but then there's others that are doing quite well.

Those farmers that direct market to consumers.

So the folks that do sell half a cow or a whole cow or a whole pig or whatever they're doing quite well they've got some meat in the freezer they've been able to sell that.

And then vegetable farmers who offers CASs or value added products are really doing quite well because people want to shop locally that, they're nervous to go to the grocery store and be around other people.

Some farmers are like, well, you can pick up a box of veggies at the end of the driveway for 20 bucks.

And, you're supporting me and my family and our local economy.

So that's been really, really big.

- So FarmNet's mission statement says that we guide New York state farms through periods of transition opportunity or challenge by providing free, confidential on farm consulting services.

We facilitate farm families in achieving their business and personal goals.

We help New York state agriculture thrive.

And so tell me a little bit about that mission and how mental health services fit in that mission.

- Sure, so New York FarmNet was started in 1986 in response to the national farm crisis of the eighties.

It was started by a group of professors at Cornell university in the college of Ag and Life Sciences.

They saw the need, they saw farmers struggling with suicide, they saw them struggling with depression and this was what they came up with to support New York agriculture.

Throughout the years, our program so we're what 30 odd years in our program has evolved and recognize that there is a lot of financial shame that ties up the business, and that's easy for farmers to ask for help with, asking for help with a budget or a business plan or whatever.

But when we get there, our team of consultants the family consultants who have a background in social work and then the financial consultants work together to help relieve that burden, that financial shame and then also help that farmer personally, there's a lot of stress, like we mentioned with farming.

So having someone who understands the social pressures, the social stressors of farming really goes a long way.

And because of our affiliation with Cornell through the college of Ag and Life Sciences and the Charles H. Dyson School of Applied Economics, we really have a lot of resources that we bring to the table, to these farm families who are struggling.

- Right.

- And that's really huge.

So it's so important that state funding that we receive because without it, we would not exist.

We wouldn't be able to support the farmers whether they're in crisis or whether they're growing their farm business.

- Right, right.

So that's an interesting kind of holistic approach the financial business side of things, but also the mental health just psychological kind of support aspect because they're connected, right?

- They're so connected.

And many people don't think of that.

And that's what makes our program really unique.

I don't know of another program exactly like New York FarmNet anywhere else in the country.

In the 1980s a lot of the 800 helplines did pop up for farmers because people were worried about them in that rightfully so.

But our program was able to evolve and pivot to incorporate both the financial piece and the personal piece and continue to support farmers because every year is different.

Every month is different.

We've seen really volatile markets this year because of COVID.

So you never know what agriculture is going to deal with next.

- Yeah, there's always something.

- Yeah.

- And when we talk about resilience, I feel like there's no one that's demonstrated more resilience than America's farmers.

- Yeah.

- For sure.

And it's awesome to hear how you and your organization are supporting them.

- Yeah, thank you.

- Thanks Kate for joining us.

- Thanks so much - To find help or to become involved with issues discussed during tonight's episode please consider reaching out to the following organizations for a more complete list of resources, visit wskg.org/dream.

(soft music) As Kate just illustrated farmers face a tremendous amount of obstacles, both emotional and physical.

Let's take a look at how one farmer and his wife in Altamont, New York are navigating the everyday challenges of operating a small family farm in the 21st century.

(soft music) - My name is Gary Kleppel, I am a professor emeritus from the University at Albany where I was an agricultural ecologist.

For the past 19 years, My wife and I have been living at Longfield.

And for the past 15 years we have been farming.

Regenerative agriculture recognizes the fact that nature kind of knows what it's doing.

We work with the natural principles of ecosystems that all ecosystems follow.

And we try to use those principles in ways that allow us to produce a clean healthy food while restoring the fertility of the soil and the functionality of those ecosystems which really we all depend on.

Industrial systems focus on very large scale production.

They focus on confinement.

They focus on intensive use of fossil fuels, intensive use of chemicals, intensive use of pesticides.

What we look at is if there's a past, there's an animal or insect that will eat that past.

In fact, for every pass there are about 1500 species of predators that past.

So why would I ever need to buy a chemical to kill the past?

Just encourage the predators of that past.

And when I do that, I increase the biodiversity.

And one of the things I've learned over nearly half a century of being an ecologist is biodiversity is good.

It works, it stabilizes things.

It creates better and healthier ecosystems.

(soft upbeat music) I remember when I was growing up, when my parents would go out to a movie and we were left home with a babysitter, my sister and I were eating these meals out of aluminum foil containers that we would heat up in the oven and today we've become a microwave economy.

Before there was refrigeration.

Everybody got their food locally, but once we figured out how to refrigerate a railroad car, now we could move food over long, long run, longer distances.

What we didn't realize at that point is that as we're moving that food no matter how cold we kept it, we were losing vitamins, we were losing flavor chemicals, we were losing all sorts of things from that food.

When I was born, an Apple was twice as nutritious as an apple is today because of the loss of the nutrient density of our soil.

What we need to understand is that the solution to feeding ourselves well lies in nature.

To understand as best we can, the bonds between the soil, the grass, and our crops and the animals that consume them.

A graduate student and his professor in Santa Cruz California demonstrated that within 250 miles of every city in the United States, there was enough food produced to feed everybody in the United States.

Small scale, local sustainable agriculture actually represents a real alternative to the industrial kind of agriculture that we have been practicing in this country for intensively for 50 to 70 Years.

I would like to see farms that are not factories for producing food, but functional productive ecosystems.

That's the key word that a farm as an ecosystem.

And I would like to see a public that is aware and that comes to visit farmers and knows their farmers and is consuming food as they say, from around the edge of the supermarket, rather than from the middle.

There will always be problems.

We're gonna to be struggling with climate change.

We're gonna be struggling with population and so life is a struggle.

But I think that every day I come out here on my farm and see my land I realize the struggle is definitely worth it.

And I feel like a gladiator.

(soft music) - [Reporter] WSKG thanks the following for their support of this project: The Conrad and Virginia Klee Foundation, the Corning Incorporated Foundation, M&T Bank, UHS and viewers like you.

Thank you.