Aaron Godard, co-owner of Snowy Mountain Farm in the Similkameen Valley of British Columbia, says farming in the province is so hard that he sometimes thinks about quitting. This year an early spring frost hit 70 percent of his orchards and a summer hailstorm took the rest of the fruit. In five years he has also faced winter freezes, mudslides, floods and wildfire smoke. "When we're feeling cheeky, we joke that we've filled out most of the natural disaster bingo cards," he told Country Life in BC.
Farm Credit Canada describes farming as one of the country's most demanding jobs, with money swings, isolation, weather and the weight of caring for land and animals adding to mental health pressure. A 2021 national survey by the University of Guelph and the Canadian Centre for Agricultural Wellbeing found that one in four farmers and ranchers had had serious thoughts in the previous year that their life was not worth living. The two are now running a new survey on stress, anxiety, depression, burnout and resilience.
BC Fruit Growers Association president Deep Brar of Brarstar Orchards in Summerland says he gets many calls from growers ready to give up, older farmers planning to sell or lease and new entrants doubting their choice. The association has lobbied to remove the eight-session cap on the AgLife Connector programme, a suicide prevention and life promotion service by AgSafe BC and the Canadian Mental Health Association of BC that offers free one-hour counselling to people in agriculture, with trained volunteers who help farmers in difficulty reach professional help.
Brar has used the counselling himself. "It was difficult to walk in at first, but once I did, I could talk about the issues and problems. It's okay not to be okay," he said, adding that "eight sessions doesn't do anything for anybody" when the sector's problems persist. AgSafe BC safety adviser TJ Garcha says demand has grown since 2021 and counsellors are continually booked; counsellors trained in agriculture and online sessions spare farmers long drives.
Godard has not used the service but says his community of fellow farmers keeps him going. The biggest stress, he says, is money: costs are high, margins thin, and "sometimes it feels like we're just one disaster away from bankruptcy." He believes policy and more safety nets for small farms could ease the strain.
Photo: GoToVan / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 2.0)
Source: Country Life in BC
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