Editor's Note: Throughout May, DTN/Progressive Farmer's special series "Mental Health Hope & Help" is exploring the unique mental health challenges people in rural America face, highlighting efforts to overcome stigma and looking at ways farmers and ranchers can manage their mental wellness. This is the ninth story in the series.
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Normally, when I write about risk management, I'm talking about financially protecting oneself from the risk of adverse market prices. I don't mention it enough, but risk management should also include a conversation about how to emotionally protect oneself from the stress of volatile prices.
Let's face it: Farming can be a wonderful way of life, but no one should pretend it's easy. Long hours, hard work in extremely hot and cold conditions, broken-down machinery, hailed-out crops, drought, floods, disease, you name it -- if the farming life didn't get you down at times, you wouldn't be human.
All of those things can happen before you go into the house for dinner. Then, you check your DTN and see grain prices down another day. As I write this in early 2024, March corn prices have fallen nine of the past 10 weeks, losing more than 60 cents a bushel. Soybeans have only posted one positive weekly gain in 15 weeks and have lost almost $2 a bushel. Wheat prices slid to their lowest level in over two years. Those downward slides can wear on a person, especially one who's doing most of the work himself.
As rough as markets have been, we humans also tend to make things worse in our own heads. It's easy for us to believe downward slides will continue -- and sometimes they do. On the other hand, just about everyone can tell you a story about the year they sold their crops at the bottom of the market because things looked so bad they didn't think prices would ever get better.
I started as a young commodity broker in 1985, just as ending supplies of U.S. corn were about to climb to 4.0 billion bushels (bb), followed by 4.88 bb in 1986-87. Spot corn fell to the painfully low price of $1.42 in the winter of 1987, and we worried it could take 10 years to work through the big mountains of corn. A drought in 1988 helped ease the surplus, and prices got a big lift in June. In the process, tempers ran high, farms were lost, and lives were changed.
Of those who survived high interest rates and 1980s prices, many will tell you the experience had a lasting effect. DTN contributor Philip Shaw has mentioned his 1980s experience several times in his "Under the Agridome" column. Ask him today what he thinks crop prices will do, and he'll frankly tell you, "Nobody knows, friend." There's a lot of well-earned wisdom in that answer.
If I could tell young farmers one thing, it would be to spend time thinking ahead about worst-case scenarios and how to protect yourself, not just financially but also emotionally. There will be hard times, but as long as the world needs corn and wheat and rice for over half of its daily calories and biofuels to keep the economy running, we're going to need producers of those crops as well.
Todd Hultman can be reached at Todd.Hultman@dtn.com
Follow him on social platform X @ToddHultman1
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For more articles in this series:
Blog:
-- Editors' Notebook: "Take Time for Mental Health," https://www.dtnpf.com/…
Stories:
-- Mental Health Hope & Help - 1: "Rural Americans Still Face Mental Health Stigma, Scarcity of Resources, But Outlook Is Improving," https://www.dtnpf.com/…
-- Mental Health Hope & Help - 2: "Farmers Urge Fellow Farmers to Reach Out When Life Overwhelms," https://www.dtnpf.com/…
-- Mental Health Hope & Help - 3: "Obstacles, Solutions Abound in Rural Youth Mental Health," https://www.dtnpf.com/…
-- Mental Health Hope & Help - 4: "Gender Differences Exist in Farmer Emotional Health," https://www.dtnpf.com/…
-- Mental Health Hope & Help - 5: "Be Mindful of a Mother's Mental Health," https://www.dtnpf.com/…
-- Mental Health Hope & Help - 6: "Mental Health Services Sparse But Still Within Reach in Rural Areas," https://www.dtnpf.com/…
-- Mental Health Hope & Help - 7: "Suicide Prevention Training Teaches Lifesaving Techniques," https://www.dtnpf.com/…
-- Mental Health Hope & Help - 8: "Training Empowers Rural Clergy, Other Community Leaders to Respond to Mental Health Crises," https://www.dtnpf.com/…
Additional resources:
For more information and mental health resources, visit our "Spotlight on Rural Mental Health" page at https://spotlights.dtnpf.com/…
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