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Remington Rice talks with IPR’s Ed Ronco. Listen using the audio player at the top of this post.
BENZONIA — Randy Rice is the fourth generation of his family to farm the same rolling acres in Benzie County. Originally purchased for $600 and a cow, the property was paid off before he was born. The Angus beef cattle munching on their morning hay are fetching good prices, enough to pay the bills this year.
Most of his friends aren’t so lucky, the 57-year-old said. At the auction house, farmers complain in general about grain prices and equipment breakdowns, but in small, private conversations they admit to buckling under the overwhelming stress of modern-day farming.
Farmers have one of the highest rates of suicide in Michigan — more than five times the overall state rate. That figure is likely an undercount, as some questionable deaths are tallied as accidental falls from silos and hunting mishaps, experts say.
Just ask Rice’s son, Remington, who helps on the farm when it’s time to castrate the steers but spends his days running a farmer suicide prevention program for Michigan State University Extension.
“People think of farms as sunshine and eating apples plucked right off the trees — what do they have to be depressed about?” the younger Rice said. “If you look at my blood cells, you won’t see a picture of my family farm, but in my mind, that is who I am, is this land.”
And when that is threatened, Remington Rice said, it can be too much for farmers to take.
Those who grow our food are under tremendous economic stress, as well as guilt over potentially losing farms that have been in their families for generations, say counselors who have worked with dozens of farmers across Michigan through MSU’s farmer suicide prevention program.
That lifeline was cut off this fall, as the program recently lost its funding in the most recent state budget and has been shut down.
“I’ve had farmers tell me that our counseling program saved their farm and likely saved their life,” Remington Rice told Bridge Michigan. “How do we tell farmers that we can’t support counseling anymore?”
‘Pressure to continue the family legacy’
Randy Rice raises cattle in Benzie County in northern Michigan just like his father, grandfather and great-grandfather before him. (Photo: Scott Harmsen for Bridge Michigan)
Farmer suicides have been a national crisis since at least the 1980s, with agricultural workers having one of the highest rates of suicide among all occupations.
In Michigan, 11 people working in farming, forestry and fishing died by suicide in 2023, the most recent year for which statewide data is available. Those involved in the collection of the data told Bridge that most deaths in that category each year are farm workers.
That’s a suicide rate of 84.5 per 100,000 workers, compared to an overall Michigan rate of 14.9. Farmer suicide rate was second in 2023 only to material moving workers, at 89 deaths per 100,000 workers.
The high risk of suicide is not a surprise to Misty Opel, health and farm stress educator for Michigan State University Extension. Opel said farmers face a “perfect storm of stress.”
Michigan farms employ 98,000 workers, according to state data, and have a direct economic impact of over $74 billion annually. Yet individual farmers are at the mercy of commodity markets and weather for which they have no control. An unusually wet spring or a dry summer can devastate a crop. And even if the weather is perfect, the sale price at harvest could be lower than the money invested.
“There’s a lot of financial stress being manifested in depression and anxiety,” Opel said. “I get a lot of calls saying, ‘I don’t know if I’m going to be able to keep the family farm.’”
The number of farms in Michigan has declined 7% since 2017 to 44,000, according to federal statistics, which don’t give a reason for the decline.
Families own 95% of Michigan’s farms, but only 46% of those had a net positive income from farming in 2023, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
On many, the history of that land weighs heavily on families, says Zane Schwaiger, a therapist in Suttons Bay who worked with MSU Extension to offer free counseling to farm families. “There’s often a tremendous pressure to continue the family legacy,” she said. “So many farms are passed down, and they’ve worked on the farms since adolescence.”
“People think of farms as sunshine and eating apples plucked right off the trees — what do they have to be depressed about?”
REMINGTON RICE | MSU Extension
‘The last generation.’
That’s true of Randy Rice, who on a recent morning placed his hand on the stone foundation of a weathered gray barn. “My great-grandfather put in that mortar,” he said. “I can still touch things that he did. You know, there’s a lot of pride in that.”
Along with pride comes pressure, says Brandon Gingrich, a dairy and crop farmer in Osceola County. Gingrich is the fourth generation in his family to work the same land.
When Gingrich spoke to Bridge in September, he had just finished harvesting his sorghum crop and was turning his attention to 900 acres of corn.
He doesn’t mind the long hours, but the stress can be overwhelming. The 36-year-old recalled a time when a huge investment in dairy robotics had failed and “we were getting no milk from the cows.” One day while chopping corn to make feed for his cattle, “I lost control of my body and couldn’t even see.”
He got help through the MSU Extension free counseling program, but those coping techniques can only do so much.
“If I quit, that means the end of the generational farm,” Gingrich said. “I get the feeling I’m the last generation.”
That’s not like quitting a job at the automotive component plant in nearby Evart. Selling the farm would mean “you’re letting your grandparents down, your parents down”
Schwaiger, the Suttons Bay therapist, knows of a farmer in northeast Michigan who died by suicide after a disastrous cherry crop endangered the family homestead. Another in Cheboygan County considered taking his own life when part of his cattle herd had to be put down because of a disease outbreak, but received help from MSU’s free farmer mental health program.
“Farmers can be very self-sufficient, because they are so used to making things work themselves,” Schwaiger said. “The work is very isolating (and) they often don’t seek out help. Stress can get to the point that they feel like they don’t have another option.”
Individual farmers are at the mercy of commodity markets and weather for which they have no control and that stress can lead to depression. (Photo: Scott Harmsen for Bridge Michigan)
‘Antidote to suicide is connection’
The Northern Michigan Small Farmers Conference in Glen Arbor in August featured an eclectic mix of sessions, from creating flower essences for emotional healing to right-to-farm law to fish waste fertilizer. Books available for purchase had titles ranging from “Gardening with Chickens” to “Passport to Kingdom Fungi.”
After a buffet lunch, about 30 farmers gathered to hear about communication and stress management.
Listening to the presentation was Bernie Ware, a retired vegetable and fruit farmer from Bear Lake in Manistee County. For years, he’d manage fields of strawberries by day and drink by night. He had multiple mishaps on the farm that he attributes to stress of “brutal” finances.
Today, he is sober and handles stress through mindfulness, meditation and walking and mentors young farmers dealing with the same stress he felt when he was working full-time on his family farm.
“People who are four, five generations on their family farm, they’re hard workers and they’re probably good managers,” Ware said. “But they’re in the wrong place at the wrong time.”
At the front of the room, Remington Rice told the group that the “antidote to suicide is connection.”
“That’s something we’re severely lacking these days,” Rice said. “Making that time to reach out to people may be inconvenient, especially during harvest, but it’s incredibly worthwhile.”
Rice encouraged exercise separate from work, such as hunting or fishing, and for farmers to separate work life from home life.
“A dental hygienist sees patients all day, works 9-5 and comes home,” Rice said. “When you’re a farmer, your patients are right outside the window.”
Rice told the farmers at the August meeting that they could get free counseling through MSU Extension’s Legacy of the Land program.
For helpHelp is available for those considering suicide or worried about a family member or friend.
• Dial 988 for assistance or go to Lifeline Chat : Lifeline (988lifeline.org)
• Farm families looking for suicide prevention help can fill out a form here
• A list of local suicide prevention crisis lines is available here
• Farm families can contact Remington Rice, a Michigan State University Extension community behavioral health educator, at (231) 882-0026
Six weeks later, the program was shut down.
‘I don’t get a day off’
The state did not renew funds for the farmer suicide prevention program in the 2025-26 budget approved in October. The program paid for 550 therapy visits and reached over 10,000 people across Michigan through educational presentations and workshops since 2020.
In the past budget year, the program received $112,000 from the state to fight the crisis, along with $90,000 from a federal grant. The federal grant also has at least temporarily lapsed, leaving the service with no funding.
Since Sept. 1, farmers must pay for counseling sessions out of their own pocket, with sessions typically costing $150 an hour.
Some have insurance that picks up some of that cost, said Schwaiger, the Suttons Bay therapist.
For now, she has continued to meet with farm families who were already being treated before the shutdown for free.
Rice still refers farmers in distress to therapists, but warns them they now will have to pay.
Before the program shutdown, “they (didn’t) hesitate to call or come, because the money isn’t a barrier,” Schwaiger said. “I would say probably 90% of the families would not be able to afford to pay for therapy.”
One of them is Chris Huntoon, who grows microgreens in his home in Grand Rapids for sale at farm markets. Huntoon had free counseling for about two years before stopping recently when he was told he would have to cover the cost himself.
He called the counseling “life-changing,” and wishes he could continue.
“My main source of discomfort is stress,” Huntoon said. “I don’t get a day off — every day is harvest, clean, disinfect.”
Three Midwest states provide state funding for mental health counseling for farmers.
Families own 95% of Michigan’s farms, but only 46% of those had a net positive income from farming in 2023, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. (Photo: Scott Harmsen for Bridge Michigan)
Iowa’s Farm Mental Health and Wellness Program offers free one-on-one counseling to farmers and ranchers, funded by a combination of federal and state funds. There is a similar program in Minnesota.
In Illinois, state funding stopped in 2023 but mental health advocates found private funding to continue offering farmer counseling. Since then, farmers have made more than 700 requests for a set of three counseling session vouchers through the Farm Mental Health and Wellness Program. If the farmers use the three vouchers and want more counseling, they can request more vouchers.
Because they are independent businesspeople, “farmers and ranchers may not have (health) insurance or (they have insurance that) does not have mental health services covered,” said Kacie Hulshof, Illinois Agriculture mental health voucher program coordinator.
“Even though it’s just 2% of the population, they feed and fuel the American people.”
Hard times and hope
Remington Rice is hopeful that a federal grant from the Farm and Ranch Stress Assistance Network will be renewed in 2026 with enough money to restart the counseling services. He’s not sure of the amount of the grant, hopes it will equal the $90,000 received last year.
That could happen as soon as January. The funding has already been delayed once.
Even if that funding comes through, Michigan’s farmer mental health program would have to operate on 44% of the money it had during the last budget year.
At the Rice family farm, father Randy Rice stood in the back yard and looked across a pasture where his cows graze in good weather. It’s the same green vista his father, grandfather and great-grandfather saw.
They survived hard times, too. But most everyone had a connection to the land back then, he said. Now, “people buy beef wrapped in cellophane and don’t know where it came from” or the hardships of the people on those farms.
“It’s a terrible situation that farmers are so stressed,” he said.
This article first appeared on Bridge Michigan and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
