OSU Extension Service aims to help ranchers and farmers with climate stress, grief

With drought, wildfire and other extreme weather events, climate change is bringing stress and a feeling of uncertainty for many farmers and ranchers. It’s also bringing along a new hurdle for many in the agricultural world – climate grief.

Seeing the effects of climate change firsthand can invoke fear, sadness, hopelessness and despair for many farmers and ranchers. A new project from Southern Oregon Research and Extension Center aims to help people understand their climate change related emotions, along with ways to work through them. Maud Powell is an associate professor at Oregon State University. She, along with her colleagues, launched the Climate Stress and Grief: Building Resilience in Farmers and Ranchers project last year and joins us to share more.

Metal health resources

• The Oregon Agristress Helpline — (833) 897-2474, available 24 hours a day, seven days a week by call or text.
• Suicide and Crisis Lifeline — 988 or 1-800-273-8255
• 211, a free service that provides information and referrals to local social services.
• Climate Stress and Grief: Building Resilience in Farmers and Ranchers

This transcript was created by a computer and edited by a volunteer.

Dave Miller: From the Gert Boyle Studio at OPB, this is Think Out Loud. I’m Dave Miller. With drought, wildfire and other extreme weather events, climate change is creating stress, uncertainty, and even grief for many farmers and ranchers. A new project from Oregon State University’s Southern Oregon Research and Extension Center aims to help people understand their climate change-related emotions and learn ways to work through them.

Maud Powell is an associate professor at OSU. She and her colleagues launched the Climate Stress and Grief Project last year, and she joins us to talk about it. Maud Powell, welcome to the show.

Maud Powell: Hi, thanks so much for having me.

Miller: Thanks for joining us. I appreciate it. So you work in various ways with small farms. Why did you decide to start focusing on this, in particular on the mental health effects of climate change?

Powell: The project actually came out of a very personal experience of losing our own farm of 25 years in the Applegate Valley due directly to climate change. We’ve been vegetable farmers selling at the growers markets and through community supported agriculture programs. And then in 2017, our creek dried up. So we started by just adapting. We grew crops that required less water, and we started collecting all of the winter rainfall into our ponds and tanks. But in the summer of 2021, when we all experienced that terrible heat dome, my husband and I turned to each other and realized that we just could no longer farm on that property. It was no longer tenable.

So we went through about a year-long process of agonizing over what we should do next. It was a really difficult constellation of emotions that year, including confusion, anger, terror, intense sadness. This was the property where we’d raised our children. We expected to bury each other on that property. And we’d really put all of our life, sweat, and blood, and tears into that place. And then we realized we were gonna have to move.

So I’d also been working at OSU Extension teaching farmers for about 17 years. And it was then that I also realized that so many of the other farmers and ranchers that I was working with were also experiencing similar, perhaps less intense, but these types of stress, anxiety and grief. Quite a few farmers [were] actually leaving the area to go to cooler and wetter climates, or scaling back their operations, or in some cases, stopping farming altogether.

Miller: There are existing programs to help farmers and ranchers dealing with stress, or depression, or anxiety. We’ve talked in the past about suicide prevention hotlines that have a focus on folks in ag-related industries. How is what you’re doing here different or the same?

Powell: Yeah, there’s certainly quite a bit of overlap. We are certainly very concerned about suicidal ideation. But we are also concerned about this kind of ongoing low-grade stress and anxiety that’s affecting farmers. And the research that’s coming out is showing that most Americans experience increasing rates of climate stress and grief. But there’s been very little research, so far, on the effects of climate change on the mental and emotional health of farmers in particular. So we are starting by doing a month of in-depth interviews and focus groups with former farmers in Oregon. And we’re hoping to find out how they’re being specifically impacted in their emotional health by climate change. And we’re also looking at what are some of the barriers to getting help and what kind of support they feel like would be useful?

Miller: What has struck you so far as you’ve been getting some data back?

Powell: Well, honestly, we just started interviews yesterday. So the jury is out. I’ll have to get back to you on that one. But in the meantime, I’ll say that we have been piloting some educational programs with farmers. Some of it is just to simply introduce them to the concepts of climate stress and grief. For a lot of people, these concepts are new, and they are experiences that they’re having in isolation.

Often, we don’t want to talk about these difficult feelings. They are not necessarily very socially acceptable or welcomed. And then explaining what some of the symptoms are. They can not only be these intense emotional states, but they can also manifest physically or in sleeplessness, excessive worry, stomach pains. So there are lots of different manifestations of how climate grief and stress appear.

Miller: I think there’s also an assumption that farmers, orchardists and ranchers are stoic by nature …

Powell: Absolutely.

Miller: … Or independent or just really good at somehow rolling with the punches, and then rolling up their sleeves and getting back to work. First of all, as you said, “absolutely.” But the flip side of that would be a reticence to seek help even when facing the kinds of issues that you’re talking about, that you faced. So, if that is true, then how do you get past that?

Powell: Yeah. Well, that is part of our research we’re hoping to find out and discover. But what I do know from working with so many farmers and being a farmer myself is that we’re very practical, pragmatic people. We’re searching for solutions. And so really, this is a lot about framing. What we’re trying to work to convince farmers of is that climate change and stress can affect our job performances. And if we’re not actually starting to identify some of these feelings that are coming up, if we’re not processing them as we’re experiencing them, they’ll actually come out in unhealthy and unproductive ways. It really is a practical approach to start naming and validating these experiences. Then also, really what we’re focusing on is a strength-based approach where we’re really looking at how we can create more states of resilience for people.

The research that’s coming out around climate stress and grief is that we’re going to be more and more in a state of toggling back and forth between distress and what we’re calling states of resilience. So over time, we’ll become more familiar with moving back and forth between these states. That, in itself, can be strengthening. But for farmers, it’s really helping them figure out what those experiences are in daily life that give you a sense of resilience and strength. Often, that’s around connecting with the natural world. Connecting with other people can also be a way to self-regulate. It can be breathing practices, or it can be going and sitting by a river, or making sure that you’re having dinner with your family on Friday nights, or whatever it is. But we’re helping farmers to identify how to build those into their already extremely busy lives.

Miller: I guess what I’m imagining is what someone could say to you in a variety of ways is, “I don’t need therapy. I need more water.” And I’m wondering how you’d respond to that? I guess, I mean it doesn’t have to be hypothetical. When you and your husband were dealing with the impending loss of your own land and farm that had meant so much to you for two decades, where you’d raised your family, where you said you’d assumed that you’d bury each other, or both be buried. I mean, if someone had said to you, “Yeah, but let me help you deal with your feelings right now,” how would you have responded?

Powell: Well, I did seek out support. And I do want to laugh at the idea of burying each other.

Miller: [Laughter] I realize my wording got a little messy there, yeah.

Powell: No, that was my wording actually. It’s a great question. And again, I think that we’re talking about this as developing resilience more than solving anyone’s problems. And I think we did get support during that period. And we needed that to think clearly, to actually sort through some of the feelings and then be able to make a decision. Because we were in a position where we had to actually decide if we’re going to keep farming and if we were going to move out of the area. We weren’t always on the same page. And so we did need support to sort through the emotions, and actually come out on the other end as a united front and feeling positive about the future.

So it’s not necessarily that we can change the present circumstances. But we can be stronger [with]in ourselves to make better decisions. And I will say, as well, that we are dealing more and more not only with this kind of ongoing climate stress and grief, but we’re dealing with all of these emergency situations, whether it’s wildfires or floods. And when people are stressed and they haven’t been addressing that type of stress, they’re actually less able to act sensibly in a crisis. We also see this as kind of an investment in your mental health, so that when these emergency disaster moments happen, we can be better resourced.

Miller: Maud Powell, thanks very much for your time. I appreciate it.

Powell: Thank you. I appreciate it.

Miller: Maud Powell is an associate professor at Oregon State University.

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