Results Identify Stressors and Coping Methods for Those in Florida Agriculture
by SHAYLYNN MARKS
For Marshal Sewell, Mind Your Melon began not as a campaign, but as a personal response to a crisis that reshaped his family’s future.
Sewell was raised on his family’s fifth-generation farm in Plant City. When the farm experienced a devastating crop failure that ultimately drove his father to take his own life, the tragedy became a turning point for Sewell.
“We wanted to take a dark topic, something that’s lived in the shadows, and make it way more approachable,” says Sewell. “It deserves to be discussed.”
With the help of the Florida Farm Bureau Federation and Carrie Baker — then a doctoral candidate at the University of Florida and now assistant professor at Oklahoma State University — Mind Your Melon helped spearhead the first statewide survey examining mental health among Florida farmers. The results are both sobering and hopeful.
The Right Method at the Right Time
Nearly 700 people participated in the survey, an unexpectedly high number given the stigma around the topic. “So many people felt compelled to sit down and take that much of their time to go through this lengthy survey about a really sensitive topic. It was a big deal,” Sewell says.
Baker agrees, saying, “I think our findings tell us that this research happened at just the right time for Florida’s agricultural industry. Folks are willing and ready to have these types of conversations around farmer mental health in the state, and that’s really important.”
According to Baker, the survey results revealed “potential risk indicators like moderate levels of stress, and more prevalent feelings of anxiousness, worry, and sadness or depression that could be cause for concern down the road.”
For Sewell, that distinction made a huge difference.
“We’re hopeful that we took this survey and implemented it at the right time,” he says. “We don’t have to go straight to crisis intervention mode. We can actually err on the side of preventive maintenance.”
What Florida Farmers Are Facing
According to the results, 67% of respondents reported feeling sad or depressed, 63.3% reported feeling nervous or worried about the future and 9% experienced suicidal thoughts. Cited among the top factors inflicting stress were weather, market volatility, financial insecurity, work and home balance, and a lack of public understanding of agriculture.
The report identified not only the stress farmers are under, but how they’re choosing to cope.
Sewell says the survey found that respondents turn to positive coping mechanisms like listening to music and finding support through faith and clergy.
However, many respondents voiced a reluctance to pursue traditional counseling.
“Over half of the survey respondents pointed out that they had never been to any sort of professional counseling or services,” Sewell explains. “But the back side to that is that they also go on to say that they don’t have any interest in pursuing those.”
Baker emphasizes the systemic nature of these stressors.
“Rather than seeing farmer mental health as an isolated issue, we need to look more broadly at the systems they operate within,” Baker explains. “Our data indicated that efforts to increase access to financial planning and risk management tools, improve healthcare provisions, and engage faith-based resources could also be effective leverage points.”
“Lack of a public understanding of agriculture was a key stressor for our sample,” she continues. “This indicated to our team that continued investment in agricultural literacy could have long-term, indirect impacts on some of the job-related stress Florida farmers face.”
From Data to Action
The Mind Your Melon team is already translating insight into action.
“We wanted to bring on voices who could potentially be informative, educational, or be resources for people in need,” Sewell says, referencing the Mind Your Melon Foundation’s podcast. “Not just therapists…but people to talk about financial management, estate planning, succession planning…general resilience.”
Plans are also underway for more community-based solutions.
“We wanted to start building this repository of other resources — whether it’s financial, family, communication, or agronomics,” he says. A searchable directory will be added to the website.
Traditional suicide prevention training can be a tough ask in agriculture.
“Some of those trainings — if you’ve been through them, you know — they can be hours and hours of PowerPoint,” Sewell says. “Trying to get people from the ag field to actually commit and sit down for one of these trainings, like getting them to leave and do something for four to eight hours, it’s a lot.”
To address that, Mind Your Melon is partnering to develop a virtual reality training program adapted from a Department of Defense protocol.
“You sit across the table from a fellow soldier who is going through a crisis and talk to them. It was one hour,” Sewell says.
“You did training upfront, a 20- to 30-minute virtual reality simulation, and then a debrief afterward. That was one hour.”
The team plans to launch an agriculture-specific version and bring it directly to growers and industry events across Florida.
Key Takeaways
When asked what he hopes farmers take from the study, Sewell emphasizes connection.
“We may not all be going through the same thing, but we’re all going through something,” he says. “It’s not just that you’re not alone — it’s about knowing who’s around you.”
Baker echoes this hope, noting that Florida has a real opportunity to lead in how farm stress is addressed. She credited the UF/IFAS Center for Leadership, Florida Farm Bureau Federation, Mind Your Melon, and industry leaders for making the project possible.
The survey offers a much-needed baseline for future efforts, one that researchers and advocates alike hope will shape more informed, compassionate support systems across Florida’s agricultural landscape.
To view the full results of the survey, go to https://tinyurl.com/bdhj737x
