KDSN RADIO News
Poll shows Iowa farmers are under more stress, pessimistic about future
More farmers reported higher levels of stress last year compared to 2022 in the latest Iowa Farm and Rural Life Poll, which surveyed nearly 950 farmers statewide. Most of the respondents were men and 66 years old, on average. J. Arbuckle, an Iowa State University extension sociologist, led the poll.
“There was a very big shift in the level of personal stress that was reported,” Arbuckle says. “I think that also kind of aligns with the decline in economic conditions leading up to the to the survey time.”
Nearly half of the participants said they had medium-level stress, while 17-percent said they had high or very high stress levels. Arbuckle says the ratings can help indicate mental health needs in the state.
Arbuckle says, “We had probably some of the strongest ratings of past farm financial performance and really high ratings of job satisfaction.”
He says job satisfaction is an important marker for mental health, but farmers also reported higher stress and were more pessimistic about their economic prospects for the next five years.
“Sixty-two-percent indicated that they thought they would be worse,” he says, “and that’s the highest that we’ve ever recorded by a long shot.”
Farmers were surveyed last February and March when crop prices and farm sector forecasts were declining after historic highs from 2021 to mid-2023.
The ISU survey about farmers’ quality of life, finances and conservation was first conducted in 1982.
