Why are America's farmers killing themselves in record numbers?

Most American Farmer's are swimming in expensive farm equipment. Debt Service is crushing to most farmer's. They are capitalized for "good times", but cannot withstand the eventual "bad times " as sure as night follows day. I built my farm up from a hobby over a 24 year period. I never bought a thing for the farm through a loan, unless I already had the money in the bank. I only borrowed money if my return on investment (ROI), where the money sat exceeded the interest rate on the bank note. If over any three consecutive months the aggregate ROI didn't exceed the interest on the bank note I cashed out and paid off the loan.

For the first 12 years, my farm "equipment" consisted of a F-250 Truck, hand tools, and a rebuilt 20 gallon batch pasteurizer and things I could build myself from salvaged materials. I've never bought anything new for the farm. Instead I improvised adapted, and overcame. My first goat shed for a 12 goat herd had a shingled roof where the shingles were made from salvaged soup cans. I also learned there is no such thing as a waste product in farming. Everything is either a retail/wholesale product or the start of a new revenue stream, most farmer's have mono-culture farms and very little diversity.

The big boy farmers around me generate far more cash per acre than I do. But they aren't even close to net profit in dollars per acre after their debt service is done. Through niche marketing, micro-farming techniques etc. I found that I could sustain us at a lower middle class income on 8 acres. They need 60+ to have a moderate lifestyle.

My wife had a great full-time job that put her in the top 20% of household incomes for the county (it's a poor county) but could sustain us at a middle income on her own. Together we have built ourselves to a 80 acre debt-free farm, with a handful of part-time employees that puts us solidly in a low (very low) six figure income and allows those single mothers that work for us to live decently, without government assistance, and still be home when their kids are out of school.

The exciting thing is that there is a growing movement of young, more pragmatic than idealistic, professionals who've had enough and taken up micro-farming, reducing their income in favor of improving their life style. I have consulted with over two dozen hobby/micro-farms that have brought one parent home and allowed the other to consider part-time.

My husband and I run a small herd of cattle, mainly because he is the 4th generation on the same plot of ground that ran cattle. We were at one point on the brink of not running cattle on this ground and my husband couldn't do it because he considered that he wasn't keeping on with the family tradition. I think the suicides are a direct result of these people not being able to do what they think is their life calling. People eat food but they don't think about how it gets there. There are a lot of people that don't understand the cost of farming. People see you selling round bales of hay and they think "look at all the money your making" not realizing that you might have $20,000 in the tractor you use to cut hay, and then you have another $10,000 in the mower, and $8,000 in the rake and then you have another $30,000 in the baler. Not to mention no one is paying us! When you are a farmer you are doing it because you love it and not for the money.

This is part of the reason our small farmers can not compete. I grew up in Indiana farmlands and as a youngster, most of the farms were not associated with the huge agribusinesses. But I had not heard of the suicides.

According to agricultural economist Vince Smith, “The largest 15 percent of farm operations and the richest farmers and landowners, with incomes and wealth that are many times the national average, receive over 85 percent of all farm subsidies.”Dec 9, 2016