Navigating Farm Stress: Traumatic and Resilient Dimensions of the Black Agrarian Frame

ABSTRACT

The current period of economic and social instability in the farm economy has generated renewed interest in the framing processes used by farmers to interpret and ascribe blame for the distress they have experienced. Studies show that agrarian frames are differentiated into types based on farmers’ historical and contemporary racialized experiences. To investigate the role that agrarian frames play in navigating farm stress, we conducted a thematic analysis using data from interviews with 15 Black farmers from three Southern states. The results identify a Black Agrarian frame with two dimensions: traumatic and resilient. The traumatic dimension provides a system-blame narrative that highlights financial risk driven by institutions and racism as a core factor in farm stress. The resilient dimension describes collective action as a key coping strategy linked to understanding the farm as a multi-faceted asset. In conclusion, research on differentiated agrarian frames is an important component towards understanding how diverse populations navigate farm stress and the development of culturally appropriate resources for addressing it.

KEYWORDS:

• Farm stress
• Black farmers
• agrarian frames
• trauma
• resilience

Acknowledgements

We thank Dr. Robin Tutor-Marcom and the NC Agromedicince Institute for their invaluable support and expertise on this project. We thank our farmer collaborators, Mrs. Dorathy Barker and Mr. Leroy Hardy, for their time and insight. And, we thank the Rural Advancement Foundation International, USA for inviting us to participate in this project. Analysis and opinions are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of any funder. We also thank the anonymous reviewers of the Journal of Agromedicine for their comments and suggestions.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

¹ See the following link for further information on FRSAN: https://www.nifa.usda.gov/grants/programs/farm-ranch-stress-assistance-network-frsan

² This is a sub-set of data collected as part of a larger project involving 30 total interviews with White and Black farmers, as well as two focus groups. A follow-up, comparative article is in preparation to understand differentiation in how White and Black farmers frame navigating farm stress.

³ The organizations comprising the team are: RAFI-USA (PI), North Carolina State University, North Carolina Agromedicine Institute, Land Loss Prevention Project, and the National Center for Appropriate Technology.

⁴ All research procedures and instruments were approved by the North Carolina State University Institutional Review Board (#21146).

⁵ The reliance on financial crisis to screen potential farmer informants was based on the original grant funding the research and on the experiences of RAFI-USA in providing services to farmers in crisis.

⁶ Of the 57 potential Black and White farmer informants for the whole study, 8 potential farmer informants did not meet the selection criteria and 19 potential farmer informants either did not respond or decided not to participate. We do not have a racial breakdown of who did not complete both interviews, as descriptive data from screener interviews was destroyed immediately after in compliance with the IRB protocol. Farmer informants who completed both phases of the interview process were compensated with a $100.00 honorarium and provided with information on state-specific mental health resources for farmers.

⁷ The themes are not in a rank order, because we do not infer magnitude of importance from code counts.

Additional information

Funding

The work was supported by a USDA Southern SARE-Funded [LS20-336] Collaborative Project led by the Rural Advancement Foundation International - USA; additional support was provided by North Carolina State University through a subcontract with RAFI-USA [573816]; supplemental support was provided by the USDA National Institute of Food and Agriculture [2020-70028-32730] Farm and Ranch Stress Asssistance Network led by the University of Tennessee at Knoxville; ; Dr. Schulman’s work was also supported by Hatch Project [NC02818] to North Carolina State University.