Farmers in America are killing themselves

-Source-CBS- Think about trying to live today on the income you had 15 years ago. Thats how agriculture expert Chris Hurt describes the plight facing U.S. farmers today. The unequal economy thats emerged over the past decade combined with patchy access to health care in rural areas have had a severe impact on the people growing Americas food. Recent data shows just how much. Farmers are dying by suicide at a higher rate than any other occupational group according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The suicide rate in the field of farming fishing and forestry is 84.5 per 100000 peoplemore than five times that of the population as a whole. Thats even as the nation overall has seen an increase in suicide rates over the last 30 years. The CDC study comes with a few caveats. It looked at workers over 17 different states but it left out some major agricultural states like Iowa. And the occupational category that includes these workers includes small numbers of workers from related occupational groups like fishing and forestry. (However agricultural workers make up the vast majority of the farming fishing and forestry occupational group.) However the figures in the CDC study mirror other recent findings. Rates of suicide have risen fastest and are highest in rural areas the CDC found in a different study released earlier this month. Other countries have seen this issue too--including India where 60000 farmer suicides have been linked to climate change. In the U.S. several longtime farm advocates say todays crisis mirrors one that happened in the 1980s when many U.S. farmers struggled economically with an accompanying spike in farmer suicides.