Farmers, particularly males below the age of 64, have a far upper possibility of suicide than the overall inhabitants. How to provide an explanation for this phenomenon? The explanations are a couple of: none, on its own, explains the whole lot. Financial pressures play a task, as does loss of get right of entry to to well being care and likely structures of the career as masculine, making calling for lend a hand much more difficult.
In the back of the bucolic pictures, the truth of the rural international incessantly stays harsh and now and again tragic. In France, a farmer commits suicide each two days. In 2016, 529 farmers affiliated with the Mutualite sociale agricole (MSA, a social welfare scheme for farmers) took their very own lives, a determine that mavens imagine is an underestimate.
Why are those women and men, who nurture society, so susceptible to the chance of suicide? Financial difficulties play a task, however don’t by myself give an explanation for one of these large and enduring phenomenon: MSA counted 604 suicides amongst its customers in 2015, whilst France’s public well being counted nearly 300 suicides between 2010 and 2011.
In all circumstances, farmers elderly 15 to 64 are roughly 46% much more likely to dedicate suicide than different socio-professional classes, consistent with the MSA 2025 record. Suicide in agriculture subsequently finds deep social mechanisms.
Suicide in agriculture, a social reality
Since Emile Durkheim (1897), suicide has been understood as a social reality. It is dependent no longer handiest on particular person psychology, but additionally on integration and social concord.
As soon as concentrated within the towns, suicides now have an effect on the agricultural international, weakened through the transformations of agricultural paintings, loneliness and the loss of present varieties of unity.
The MSA 2026 record displays that non-agricultural workers (as an example, farm managers) are on the best possibility of suicide. This extra possibility, of roughly 56.7%, is upper than the chance of the ones hired in agriculture (40%) and the overall inhabitants.
Suicides through MSA circumstances in 2022 MSA value and output record 2025
It in particular impacts males between the ages of 45 and 54 and the ones older than 65, with pronounced regional disparities. Suicide charges upper than the nationwide reasonable are in particular concentrated in rural and semi-rural spaces of France. The MSA identifies a number of territories which are in particular in peril, together with Brittany and the broader Armorique, Dordogne and Lot-et-Garonne, Poitou, Mayenne, Orne and Sarts, Limousin, in addition to Charantes.
Possibility elements come with age, gender (males are nearly 3 times much more likely than girls), psychiatric sickness and a historical past of suicide makes an attempt within the 5 years sooner than the act.
Agricultural suicide is subsequently a symptom of struggling of social foundation. Suicide in agriculture should be understood no longer handiest as a person struggling, but additionally as a phenomenon formed through collective and structural elements. Noticed regularities in publicity to over the top possibility (age, gender, position of place of abode, sector of job, and so on.) display that this is a social reality whose reasons are essentially social and contextual.
Possibility elements for suicide amongst farmers elderly 15 to 64. MSA 2025 Price and Product File
It can’t be freed handiest with mental lend a hand. Research of care pathways displays that almost all profile, representing greater than three-quarters of suicides, corresponds to individuals who had little recourse to care within the yr previous their dying. If rural spaces seem extra uncovered consistent with the INSEE density grid, the statistics right here disclose that there is not any direct hyperlink between get right of entry to to number one care and suicide.
Due to this fact, the surplus possibility seen in rural spaces does no longer seem to be associated with density or get right of entry to to care, however relatively to different social determinants. Addressing the stipulations that produce struggling is very important.
A mixture of reasons that build up the chance of suicide
Lowering farmers’ suicides to the industrial disaster can be a mistake. Milk crises, mad cow illness or emerging prices can cause movements, however they don’t seem to be unmarried reasons. Sociologist Nicolas Defontaine confirmed that each state of affairs combines financial, social, symbolic and biographical elements.
In 2015, in Sainte-Anne-d’Aurai (Morbihan), a person planted a white move in reminiscence of farmers who dedicate suicide once a year. Jean-Sebastien Evrard/AFP
Each and every path is exclusive. Some see the industrial cave in as a lack of identification. Others are matter to circle of relatives force or community perspectives. Transformations within the career, dependence on world markets, bureaucratization and process lack of confidence deeply disrupt existence balances. Agricultural suicide isn’t cyclical: this is a structural phenomenon that finds a converting gadget and a struggling authentic identification.
Between 2018 and 2021, Brittany experimented with a retraining gadget for farmers in issue. Testimonies of transformed folks indicate that lack of job manner lack of experience, social function and which means in on a regular basis existence. Retraining comes to a troublesome recomposition of identification, related to mourning: mourning a historical past, a standing, a calling, now and again even a existence mission. That is the query I discover in an editorial to be revealed in December 2025 within the magazine Paisans et Societe, 2025/6, no. 414.
A career this is nonetheless incessantly built as male
The rural international stays deeply marked through the gender development of the career. A powerful and silent manufacturer guy symbolizes the “good farmer”. Bodily prowess, staying power and overall willpower to the operation outline this style.
It is a part of hegemonic masculinity in Revyn Connell’s sense, which values energy, self-discipline and distance from struggling. The gender department of work and the switch of assets make stronger this male identification.
Those representations immediately have an effect on the psychological well being of farmers: soliciting for lend a hand, resting or admitting bother will also be perceived as weak point or an assault on authentic honor. The valorization of autonomy, inherited from peasant independence, can thus result in the denial of vulnerability. Gender norms produce differential publicity to struggling and suicidal possibility. Figuring out this gender size is very important for any prevention coverage.
Suicide in agriculture is subsequently multifactorial and will handiest be understood through articulating the industrial, social, cultural and gender dimensions of the career. It finds much less particular person fragility than the tensions of a pro and symbolic gadget in disaster.
Tips on how to save you agricultural misery?
Present prevention insurance policies are in line with a number of axes:
elevating consciousness and coaching farmers and mavens to stumble on the issue;
get right of entry to to mental lend a hand, during the helpline (Agri’eco, a novel phone quantity to be had to MSA policyholders in nice want, to be had 24 hours an afternoon, seven days every week), session and explicit enhance;
collective prevention, with mutual support networks, chat groups and native enhance to scale back isolation.
The MSA Program for the Prevention of Agricultural Discomfort (PMEA) goals to construction and coordinate those movements. It intervenes on the first indicators of difficulties and mobilizes stakeholders in agriculture, institutional companions and well being employees.
“Watchmen”, volunteers or native pros from the agricultural international, play a key function within the gadget. They’re those who realize indicators of bother, pay attention and information farmers to the suitable constructions. Their proximity to the bottom permits intervention sooner than rupture. This human means, in line with unity and anchored in territory, is a pillar of psychological well being in agricultural environments.
However for those movements to be totally efficient, it is vital to take into accout the stories (together with difficulties) skilled through those guards, who don’t essentially must be energetic within the agricultural sector. They may be able to even be agricultural retirees or different non-agricultural rural actors, as an example mayors and the city secretaries, ambulance drivers, veterinarians, and so on. Due to this fact, we should meet their coaching and enhance wishes. Between 2023 and 2024, the choice of guards larger through 29%.
One of these systemic means, arranged round an actual ecosystem for the prevention of agricultural issues (encompassing a community of native actors, well being employees, establishments and public insurance policies), represents the primary method to construct a psychological well being technique within the agricultural setting, able to responding to particular person vulnerabilities whilst performing on social and collective elements.
