Saving the farm: Heartland clergy train to prevent agriculture workers' suicides

LAKE BENTON, Minn. — With traces of winter’s unusually heavy snow still lingering but a warm sun finally shining, farmers were out dawn to dusk in early May on their tractors, planting corn and soybeans across southwestern Minnesota fields many have owned for generations.

The threat of losing these beloved family farms has become a constant worry, affecting many farmers’ mental health and raising concerns of another uptick in suicides like during the 1980s farm crisis. Much of the stress stems from being dependent on factors largely outside their control – from the increasingly unpredictable weather to growing costs of equipment to global market swings that can wipe out profits.

“You’d be surprised how many people are suffering with depression. Farmers have been a group of people who keep problems to themselves, proud and private,” said Bob Worth, a third-generation crop farmer who with his son works 2,100 acres of rich, black soil near the hamlet of Lake Benton.

“The more you talk about this, the more you realize it can be fixed,” added Worth, who credits his wife with saving his life in the 1980s when he got so depressed that he wouldn’t budge from bed even for the harvest. At least three neighbors and fellow farmers killed themselves, Worth said.

Increasingly aware of agricultural workers’ struggles with mental health, states such as Minnesota and South Dakota, a few miles west of Worth’s farm, are offering suicide prevention training to clergy – who are a crucial, trusted presence in rural America.

In Pipestone, the bigger town down the dirt road from Worth’s farm – with 4,200 residents and a dozen churches – pastors from three Lutheran parishes are taking the four-week suicide prevention program for clergy that Minnesota’s departments of agriculture and health launched this spring.

“I want to learn to help. This could be anybody,” said the Rev. Robert Moeller, recalling his first realization of the scourge of suicide among farmers, when a customer in the feed business he worked at before being ordained killed himself.

Moeller plans to introduce suicide prevention in his 5th through 8th grade catechism class at Our Saviour’s Lutheran Church, and is eager to learn about supporting surviving family members and those who attempted suicide without the stigma and shame often attached to it.

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EDITOR’S NOTE — This story includes discussion of suicide. The national suicide and crisis lifeline is available by calling or texting 988. There is also an online chat at 988lifeline.org.