Indian/Alaska Native; 1.3% Black; .8% more than one race; .6% Asian; and .1% Hawaiian/Pacific Islander (USDA Census of Agriculture NASS, 2019).
Two minutes and forty seconds into this 2019 video from the USDA National Agricultural Statistics Service, Ginger Harris, Demographer, reveals key data from the 2017 USDA Agriculture Census.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XRKhL2n48rg &feature=youtu.be
VIDEO
Farming population subgroups experience different realities in living and farming. Some experience gender, race, and sexual orientation discrimination, and some share social determinants of health that threaten their well-being and ability to farm. Structural racism in U.S. agriculture has a long history. As one psychological researcher put it, “Bad things happen” (Bonanno, 2004, 2005; Bonanno et al., 2011). Everyone experiences the adversities of life. In the United States, 90% of the general population has experienced a traumatic event (Kilpatrick et al., 2013). For some, those adversities arise out of multi- generational and societal conditions that make living stressful. Decades of stress and health research has suggested that stressors have a substantial damaging impact on health; are experienced differently according to gender, race, marital status, socioeconomic factors, and status; and occur over the course of life and across generations (Kilpatrick et al., 2013). Over time and across the general population, sources of stress hold relatively constant (American Psychological Association, 2015). New in 2020 was the added extraordinary stressor of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Speaking via a 3-minute video, Ted Matthews, rural mental health practitioner and Director of the Minnesota Rural Mental Health Office, Department of Agriculture, briefly addressed stressors of COVID-19 among farmers in the short and long term. He raised concerns going forward about a rise in Post-Traumatic Stress Disorders (PTSD) among farmers who dealt with COVID-19 related problems such as those experienced by hog farmers.
VIDEO
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x16eRAAxfOc
Women in Agriculture. Between the 2012 and 2017 U.S. Department of Agriculture Census, the number of farms with at least one woman producer increased 27% (USDA National Agricultural Statistics Service, 2014 and 2019). Those women were 95% White and 5%, women of color. The stressors and challenges of female farmers are little understood, though there is evidence of gender discrimination in agriculture in being accepted as a farmer and in getting access to land and other resources. Female farmers in sustainable
23
Powered by FlippingBook