The toll of farm life: Amstelveen dairy farmer Bart struggles with depression

The tabur campaign is an initiative of the agricultural organizations LTO and ZOB. For years there have been concerns about the number of suicides among farmers. Every year, between 20 and 30 people in the agricultural sector take their own lives. Those suicides are just the tip of the iceberg, Esther Reinders of LTO Noord fears. “Suicides are tallied, mental problems are not.”

“We see that farmers are having a hard time,” says Reinders. There are several reasons for this, she says. At the moment, there is a lot of uncertainty about whether you can continue to farm, you may have to deal with bird flu or other animal diseases, and an event such as a barn fire also makes existence uncertain. Moreover, there is a lot to do about the regulations for farmers, which entails pressure from society.

Dairy farmer Bart Wesselingh talks candidly about his mental depression – although he wonders aloud what depression actually is. He himself makes the subject negotiable among colleagues by giving lessons about it. “I turn my mental depression into something positive. You can see it as a burden, but you can also see it as a challenge,” says the farmer.

‘Evicted as a criminal’

It gnaws at Wesselingh that society has a wrong image of farmers, because that’s how he experiences it. The profession is his passion. Animals and nature are close to his heart. He tries to farm sustainably, among other things by working a lot with residual products. “But you will be dismissed as a criminal.”

He explains his feeling using an example of tackling geese nuisance. “If I want to claim compensation from the government, I must first demonstrate from the legislation that I am tackling the problem. I have to shoot the geese. If people see a hunter on my property, I am an animal abuser. It is very difficult in between choosing, that conflict kills me.”

Loneliness

Life on the farm is very lonely, Reinders sees. That, she says, is a common cause of depression. “A farmer is often alone on the land. They then have plenty of time to worry. Work and private life are very lofty. There is a lot of attention for the economic side of farmers, but less attention has traditionally been paid to the mental side.”

According to Reinders, the added value of Tabur is that the helpline is managed by people from the sector itself. They understand the ins and outs of farm life better than the average GP or psychologist, Reinders thinks. The helpline works in two ways: on the one hand, calls can be made purely for a listening ear, on the other hand, people can talk to experts by experience.

Break taboo

Wesselingh thinks Tabboer is a good initiative and thinks it can offer a solution for colleagues. He knows stories of other farmers who also suffer from mental problems, but talking about them is difficult. “You don’t want to think about it too long, sometimes it is also a taboo to talk about it. It is precisely that taboo that can be broken by the campaign,” he concludes.