Caption: Mitch Hancock, owner of NooSun Dairy in Corinne, Utah (Trent Nelson/The Salt Lake Tribune)

The couple has owned the dairy since her father died by suicide in 2014. Hancock talked to us about how there was little time for him to grieve in the days after his father-in-law’s death: There were still cows to milk, two more cuttings of alfalfa that needed to be made and another month of harvesting corn. 

Utah has higher rates of depression than the rest of the United States, but there’s one group of people who face unique stressors that can affect their mental health: farmers and ranchers. There’s a lot about their jobs they can’t control, like fluctuating market prices, unpredictable weather or animals getting sick. And the Trump administration’s shifts in policies around tariffs and freezing federal grants have only increased uncertainty for American farmers.

I’ve been reporting on mental health in Utah’s agricultural industry for the last few months, speaking with farmers and ranchers through the state, reading reports on Utah’s consistently high suicide rates and analyzing how other states have supported agriculture workers’ mental health. We visited Hancock’s farm to hear more about the stress that farmers and ranchers face. Hancock told us that he feels a weight greater than just having a successful business and supporting his family. He buys feed from his neighbors for his cows and has employees who need their jobs. He feels the pressure to support his entire community.

But farmers don’t often share with one another when they are under stress, he said. “I think we struggle in quiet.”

Farmers in the United States are 3.5 times more likely to die by suicide than the general population, according to the National Rural Health Association. Utah’s suicide rate has consistently been among the nation’s highest, and farmers and ranchers here die by suicide at the third-highest rate by vocation in the state, according to state data, behind miners and construction workers.

In 2023, a program funded by federal pandemic relief money helped a few hundred Utah farmers and their families get free therapy. It was so successful, the money set aside to pay for mental health care ran out in four months. This was far quicker than Utah organizers expected, and to them it showed a deep need and willingness for farmers to get help when cost is not a barrier.

But that money is now gone. Other states have drummed up state funds or private donors to keep this support for farmers and ranchers going. But Utah hasn’t. 

I asked the Utah Legislature if lawmakers would want to fund a program to support farmers’ mental health and was put in touch with Sen. Scott Sandall. He’s a farmer and rancher and is on the committee that decides how to spend taxpayer dollars.

He told me he doesn’t think Utah should fund a program that targets mental health support for one specific profession. He predicted it would cause a "battle for funding” that would pit industries against one another because there is so much demand for mental health support in Utah.

But one organizer said he knows that funding support for farmers’ mental health can help people. Josh Dallin, with Utah State University Extension, said he got feedback from one person who received free therapy who told him that it saved their life.

“I honestly believe,” he said, “that if the government or if some organization were to give us a million dollars a year, I think we could spend it.”

***

If You or Someone You Know Needs Help

You can dial 988 to reach the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline.