A22-Uncast«r Farming, Saturday, May 31,1986
Research Data Given On Farm Family Stress
Editor’s Note: We hear a lot about
the stress that’s placed on farm
families do to an economy that
forces farmers out of their
preferred occupation. Harold
Capener, Department of Rural
Sociology, Cornell University,
spoke on this subject to the North
eastern Ag Communication
Conference in Ithaca last week.
Here are some of the facts
reported by the professor;
There’s a mark difference in the
nature of the farm families that
are going out of fanning today
from what we have been ac
customed to in the ’4os, ’sos and
’6os.
In 1964 a study here in New York
state done by Larry Zeitermoff,
Department of Agricultural
Economics, on farmers who stop
shipping milk to Syracuse. He
found that these were for the most
part in the 20 to 30 cow range of
operations. They were older in age.
Eighty-six percent of them were
over 50. They had relatively little
education. Seventy-one percent of
them had less than high school.
The number of years that they had
been in farming was very long.
Sixty-six percent of them had been
in over 20 years. Their income
from farming was low. Sixty-two
percent were making under $2,000
off the farm. Obviously, they were
surviving by off farm work. They
were doing other things to sup
plement that kind of a level of
income. This was the charac
terization of these kinds of families
that had gone out in 1964. In
summary, these were smaller
tenant level kind of farms with
persons of little education, with
limited skills, with low equity, with
low income, with little political or
economic clout. We came to feel
that they did not make that much
difference in the farm economy.
Today the current families that
are being involved in this depletion
represent a group who are rather
highly educated, who are very
capable and dedicated kind of
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farmers who have very alert and
promising children, who have been
social, civic, and religious leaders
in their community. They are
farmers and families who are
young and capable and aggressive
managers. People who one of the
midwest bankers said, “They are
the kind of families that we were
betting on. We had given them our
money. We were so confident in
them. And when they lost it, it
wasn’t their fault. It was a set of
externalities that were largely
beyond their control.”
What happens then to the
agricultural communities in which
these kinds of families live? In
Lebanon, Kansas, a population of
500, the school closed, the jail
closed, the sheriff layed off four of
the eight deputies that he had. And
these were the deputies that were
needed to attend the auctions and
the foreclosures. In Lennox, lowa,
a population of 1,380, for sale signs
were up for the residents. Young
people left town. Health services
and social services were cut.
Gravel roads went back to dirt
roads. In these communities, the
impact on the lumber yards, the
hardware stores, the drug stores,
the service stations, the beauty
salons, the banks, the agri business
dealers, the automobile dealers,
and the vitality of the social and
the civic and the religious
organizations were all marketably
effected.
In the northeast we have ap
proximately two years of lag time
that we’ve been enjoying since this
thing hit the midwest. It’s called
lag time because we haven’t yet
literally become conscious of the
impact that this farm decline is
going to have on our economy.
There has been a steady decline
however in New York state farms.
Our highest number of farms as
you know was in 1880 when we had
240,000. Today 100 years later, we
have 25,000 of what’s called
commercial farms. That’s about
an 85 percent decline in 100 years.
That’s pretty steep if you look at
the chart. Of the 25,000 commercial
farms that we have today, it’s
estimated we’ll lose a quarter of
those farms within the next five
years. Many of these farms are the
cream of the crop. Dedicated,
capable, young family farm units
that simply got started because
they were bom at the wrong time.
They got started in the mid ‘7os
and in the ‘Bos, the very worst time
to try to buy into a high rolling
enterprise with everything high.
And on the euphoria that
everything is going to be roses
because it looks so promising. But
then comes 1981-1982 and they find
themselves leveraged in positions
that were impossible for them.
Of course the needs of farm
families in stress are different
from off farm needs. An in
teresting comparison was made by
Joan Blongdale who is a mental
health consultant in northern lowa.
Joan had worked in Rhode Island
for many years and one of the last
experiences she had in Rhode
Island just before she left was to
help close down the General
Dynamics Boat Division in which
some 3,000 people lost their jobs.
And she felt that she was pretty
skilled in terms of bringing
assistance to families in need.
*0
'‘i
She said when she got out to
northern lowa and began to deal
with the farm families there she
understood how little she really
knew about the differences bet
ween farm families and the
families who have their oc
cupations in industry. True, all
persons who lose their income
have the same kind of worries
about where the food is going to
come from, how the rent is going to
be paid, how they are going to pay
the school expenses, and the daily
elements of living. But she said
from that point on there is not very
much similarity. What is different
with the farm families is that they
do not have employment in
surance. They do not have a
package of fringe benefits that
have often times includes medical
benefits and other kinds of in
surance. They have not had to
mortgage their home in order to
obtain their job or to work at the
factory. Their children have not
necessarily had a career ex
pectation to take over the dad’s
job.
And she said most important of
all, when you lose your job at the
factory, it is not your fault. It is
somebody elses doings that relieve
you of a burden of guilt and
responsibility. She said she had no
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appreciation of that until she
began to deal with these families.
The sense of image for a farmer is
what we know in rural ideaology as
status' based on what we call
ascribed characteristics.
It’s who you are thajt identifies
you. It’s your occupation that
identifies you. And so if you are
farmer Bill Smith and you live on
the Smith farm that’s who you are.
And if you do not have the Smith
farm any more then who are you?
What are you? This kind of identity
loss, this ego loss, this self image
loss, gives you the feeling of being
a failure, the feeling of blame, and
the feeling of being a poor
manager. The eyes of your
neighbors on you. These kind of
things are talked about in the rural
sector, around the kitchen table in
terms of the families in the
neighborhood. Kids pick up this
kind of conversation on the school
bus and it’s passed along to the
other kids and it then goes on into
the family context. The children of
the family feel the same kind of
loss. A young teenager has the
feeling that his whole future has
just gone down the drain. And who
is he? And what is he? He has spent
his life career with an expectation
that this is what his future is going
to be. And so we see the depths of
this kind of devastation on farm
families.