Wisconsin [ An American state ] has recorded a 50 per cent dip in farm income in the six years since 2011. In 2017, it reported a record 915 suicides, mostly among the farming community.
This news from the United States has Indian hues — agrarian crisis, farmers’ suicides and political debates over them. But it is also surprising, given the political fallout.
Just imagine an agriculture minister of an Indian state being thrown out for asking more for farmers. Before that though we Indians would ask in disbelief: Do American farmers commit suicide out of distress?
- It is a time of deepening distress for American farmers:
- Chuck Grassley and Jon Tester, the US Senate’s only farmer members, recently introduced the Seeding Rural Resilience Act. The law aims at tackling the country’s rising rate of farmer suicide due to dipping income.
- US-based non-profit Farm Aid reported that its farmer hotline recorded 109 per cent increase in distress calls last year.
- The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says that suicide rate among farming communities is 1.5 times higher than the national average.
- Like in India in recent years, the US doesn’t have reliable data on farmers’ suicide.
An American farmer’s unfortunate path to suicide has all Indian features. Since 2013, farmers in the US have suffered a near 49 per cent dip in net income from farming due to crash in commodity prices. In fact, the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) estimates that more than half of US farmers currently have a negative farm income.
