Minnesota starts crisis hotline for farmers
HOUSTON, Minn. (AP) — Minnesota has started a hotline to help farmers feeling the financial and psychological impact the tough times.
It’s in high need. The nation’s largest network of crisis hotlines for agricultural workers, Iowa-based AgriWellness, has seen an 18 percent increase in calls in the last year.
Mike Rosmann, who works at AgriWellness, tells Minnesota Public Radio that many calls are from dairy producers in Wisconsin, southeastern Minnesota and parts of Iowa. They’ve seen their operations crippled by plunging milk prices and many could shut down.
Crisis hotlines have seen calls increase since last fall, when pork and dairy prices began to collapse.
Minnesota launched this month a Farmer Assistance Network, which includes confidential crisis counseling. It’s modeled after the Farm Advocate Program that began during the farm crisis of the 1980s.
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Information from: Minnesota Public Radio News, http://www.mpr.org
Nov 30, 2009 at 1:54 p.m.
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And thanks to NAFTA those manufacturing jobs will never be coming back, unlike the 30s when the need for WMDs in WWII created factory jobs that pulled us out of the depression.
Nov 30, 2009 at 9:06 a.m.
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Without Agriculture and Manufacturing this country cannot survive.
Sam Walton wrote something similar back in the mid 80's. This country needs to grow it's own food and that food needs to be grown by independent farmers, not large corporate farms.
Nov 30, 2009 at 8:01 a.m.
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FYI -- The Wisconsin Farm Center has a similar hotline. 1-800-942-2474.
farmcenter@wisconsin.gov
www.datcp.state.wi.us
Nov 29, 2009 at 9:16 p.m.
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Republiberal, do you honestly think, in today's economy, the farmers can sell their land, their family land for generations in most cases, for enough money to pay the mortgage on their land, much less the loans that they owe on all their equipment? Do you know how small a portion of the $2+ a gallon that we pay for milk actually makes it to the farmer? I don't know the exact number, but I can bet you it is less than 25% of that. And when you factor in the long hours they work, day in and day out all year, they make WAY less than minimum wage. Most of them continue to do it because that is what they know and love.
And you callously say "sell their (I corrected your misspelling) land". How heartless, and how thoughless. What do you think would happen to food prices if the small farmers all sold their land? All that would be left would be major corporations, who would run the price of food through the roof. Maybe you might want to rethink your glib remark.
Nov 29, 2009 at 9:06 p.m.
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Hmmm,, same people that didnt want other gov bailouts.. lets help them again as we have been bailing them out for over 50 years... sell there land if they need the money...
Nov 29, 2009 at 5:57 p.m.
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Welcome to the same world of a lot of other small-business people..
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