by Chang-Fleeman got into agriculture right out of college, where he spent several years working on the campus farm. As a third-generation Chinese American, he noticed a distinct lack of Asian vegetables at local farmers’ markets, especially those grown organically, and doubted there would be demand if there was supply. He began experimenting with certain varieties, and his suspicions were quickly confirmed when samples of his choy sum caught the attention of chef Brandon Jew of Mister Jiu’s, a Michelin-starred contemporary Chinese restaurant in the heart of San Francisco’s Chinatown. Jewish provided some seed funds for Shao Shan Farm in 2019.
During the first year of running his farm, Chang-Fleeman focused his sales on his relationships with local restaurants, while attending several farmers market sales to supplement income. But when the COVID-19 pandemic hit in early 2020, he lost all of his restaurant accounts overnight.
Like many farmers at the time, he embraced the CSA model, offering farm boxes that provide the family with a variety of vegetables throughout the week.
“So literally overnight, I reworked my crop plan” he told me. “Just to get through that year, or through that season, I don’t know how long [the pandemic was going to] last.”
As if a global pandemic were not enough, in 2021, California entered a drought, and lost the ability to irrigate its crops in the middle of summer, which meant a hard stop to production.
“I was hoping to hit some kind of rhythm, and every year felt a little bit like starting from scratch,” Chang-Fleeman reflected.
While owning a farm, he worked side jobs to compensate for the slow increase in business income and the fact that he could only afford to pay himself a monthly salary of $2,000. He regularly worked 90 hours a week. At the same time, there was an increase in farm costs.
“The cost of our packaging has tripled in one year and the cost of the products has not changed,” he explained. “Our operating costs went up like 30%, after COVID.”
In four short years, Chang-Fleeman experienced an avalanche of extenuating circumstances that would bring most farm businesses to their knees. But it was what ultimately led to the closure of his business. He experienced exhaustion and pressure over time until he reached a breaking point. “If I don’t stop now, he will kill me,” he thought.
Chang-Fleeman’s escape reminded me of my own story. In the fall of 2018, I took a two-month medical leave from an organic farm I managed in Northern California to try to resolve a series of strange symptoms including spells of dizziness and heart palpitations. If you know anything about farming, fall is not the time to be absent. It is the peak time of autumn and all your work is done. But as my medical condition worsened, I was no closer to returning to work. After many doctor visits, several trips to the specialist, a flurry of blood tests, and a week of heart monitoring, it took one Xanax to solve the mystery.
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Prolonged physical stress at work triggered panic disorder, a nervous system disorder that sent me into a near-chronic fight-or-flight state, resulting in a myriad of unrelated physical symptoms. usually they “concern.”
For me, this was a wake-up call. I turned to a number of Western and naturopathic remedies to relieve my symptoms, but in the end, what enabled me, for the most part, was to remove the stresses of farm management from my nervous system. . Even now, six years later, I am constantly going through the ‘new normal’ of this diagnosis.
A 2020 pilot study by agricultural researcher Josie Rudolphi and her colleagues found that, of 170 participants, approximately 71% met criteria for Generalized Anxiety Disorder. In comparison, in the US, 18% of adults are estimated to have an anxiety disorder. Rudolphi’s work suggests that these disorders may be three times more prevalent among young farmers and young farmers.
This was true as I went from farm to farm trying to figure out what so often goes wrong in a new farm operation. Again and again mental health was a lifeline. Collette Walsh, owner of a cut flower operation in Braddock, PA, put it bluntly: “I usually get to a point in late August or early September where I’m crying for a week.”
How can we build a farming economy that helps young farmers not only stay, but thrive on the land? One way is the Farm Bill, a package of federal legislation that provides funding for agricultural programs. With the reintroduction of the Farm Bill, it is a critical time to ask these questions and advocate for policies that support young farmers and the barriers they face to maintaining a long-term career in agriculture.
Take for example, Jac Wypler, Director of Farmer Mental Health at the National Alliance of Young Farmers (Young Farmers), who oversees the Northeast region’s Farmer and Rancher Stress Assistance Network (FRSAN). The organization was established by the Farm Bill in 2018 to develop a network of service providers for farmers, ranchers, and other agricultural workers dedicated to mental well-being. Through the network of service providers she directs, called “Cultivemos,” Wypler and her colleagues use a multi-layered approach to address mental health in farming spaces. Cultivemos partners provide direct support during times of stress and crisis as well as peer support spaces.
There is clearly a need for an expanded (and subsidized) program that scales efforts like Cultivemos that are commensurate with the young workforce. But that’s only part of the picture.
“While we believe it is important to ensure that farms, farmers and farm workers are receiving direct support for their mental health,” explained Wypler. “We need to alleviate what is stressing them out.”
Cultivemos works to address the structural root causes of stress, including climate change, land prices, and systemic racism, to name a few. They target communities disproportionately harmed by these underlying structural causes, particularly Black, Indigenous and other farmers of color. Finally, they seek to make this impact by returning funding directly to these farmers.
“The way I think about reassurance is that the USDA and these big institutions are the Mississippi River funded.” Wypler said. “We’re trying to get the funding into these smaller rivers and tributaries to spread these funds and shift that power dynamic and leadership dynamic.”
The next Farm Bill cycle will be critical to ensuring that this work continues. In November 2023, lawmakers signed a stop-gap funding bill that allows a one-year extension of the 2018 Farm Bill. Lawmakers are currently debating the bill until September when it is up for a vote. Young Farmers emphasizes the importance of the appropriations process, which is when funding is allocated to program areas authorized in the farm bill.
The country has ebbed and flowed over the past century, booming in the pre-Depression years of the 1930s, dying in the war years and then storming back in the 60s and 70s. When my generation’s farming revolution took hold in the early 2000s, I was similarly swept up. I imagined when I chose farming that the path would be for life. What I hadn’t accounted for, as a determined, star-studded maker, was the damage a decade of farming through wildfires, evacuations, floods, power outages and global pandemics would have on my mental health.
Don’t get me wrong: I am was happy to work hard with my two feet planted firmly on the ground. In a better world myself and people like Scott Chang-Fleeman would be getting our hands dirty, making an honest, if modest living, providing good, wholesome food in sync with the rhythms of the planet.
But to borrow a word from the world of ecology, being a young farmer is “unsustainable” in today’s economy. The numbers don’t work economically and, in the end, any mind trying to square this unsquared circle will break. The economic, physical and mental challenges are all interconnected.
It is difficult to find an American, Republican or Democrat resident of a red or blue state who does not want more young hands on the land. We should all look to agriculture as a way to personal fulfillment and a way to make our food supply healthier and more secure. But words and intentions can only do so much. We need to answer these real problems with real subsidies.
If we don’t, my generation may be the last to think of “returning to the country” as something worth doing.
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