Protecting Utah farmers’ and ranchers’ mental health should be a priority

If Congress won’t, the Utah Legislature should.

If we never fixed anything until we could fix everything, it would be a grim world indeed.

Utah lawmakers have expressed a stubborn reluctance to restore a lapsed federal program that had provided mental health assistance to folks in a walk of American life that really needs it: Our farmers.

Farmers and ranchers work long hours in all kinds of weather in a fickle market that provides no guarantee of reward. They are often isolated, physically and emotionally, and tend to have been raised in a culture that values stoicism over emotion. And there are often more than a few guns about.

So it is no surprise that the suicide rate among farmers and ranchers nationally is more than three times that of the general population. In Utah, which has a high suicide rate generally, farmers are high on the list of vocations who are vulnerable.

Congress provided, as one of many steps to try to make up for the financial pressures of the coronavirus pandemic, money for mental health services for farmers. Utah got $500,000, much of it going out in the form of vouchers for mental health counseling.

Surprisingly, perhaps, many people in rural Utah took advantage of the program and it has been credited with making a big difference in preventing suicide. Now the money is gone, but the need is not.

Utah lawmakers are, understandably, miffed that Congress, again, began a program it wasn’t willing to continue. And they note, correctly, that it is not only people in agriculture who need mental health assistance.

But the program for farmers was created. It works. Congress should keep it going. It hasn’t. And, given the habit of that body to leave most of its work undone, it probably won’t. (The last comprehensive Farm Bill ran out in 2023.)

The program to safeguard the mental health of Utah farmers deserves to be continued. If Congress won’t, the Utah Legislature should.

Editorials represent the opinions of The Salt Lake Tribune editorial board, which operates independently from the newsroom.