Source: Colorado Sun
Robert Sakata appeared to have so much going for him that he doubts anyone knew his real state of mind until he choked up while giving a report to the Colorado Water Conservation Board at a meeting in 2021.
He was a second-generation farmer who grew 3,000 acres of vegetables on his family’s land in Brighton. He was well known and respected, the governor-appointed CWCB board member from the South Platte/Republican Basin. He had a market of 3 million to 4 million people on the Front Range to buy his produce. And he was on his way to becoming the Colorado Department of Agriculture’s first agricultural water policy adviser, a role he has filled since December 2023.
But he was deeply worried — about his father, who was ailing, about increasing regulatory burdens that were driving up costs of operation, about a host of other challenges unique to producers.
He wondered how he was going to house the 400 seasonal employees queued up to work for him. And he was facing other, more surprising problems that he told the board urban farmers in his region face. People were stealing farm equipment. They were dumping mattresses in their fields. They were putting grass clippings in irrigation ditches. And like many others, Sakata had the added stress of losing two entire crops in a single hailstorm. Then there was the guilt of possibly not being able to maintain his father’s legacy.
That’s when Sakata broke down in the meeting. He said the burdens he mentioned contributed to “the depressed mood of farmers and ranchers in Colorado” and he wanted the board to understand how much stress they’re under and how certain policies could affect them.
Addressing rural behavioral health
Organizations like the Rocky Mountain Farmers Union, the Colorado Farm Bureau, Colorado State University’s Colorado AgrAbility Project and the Colorado Behavioral Health Administration have been working to bring behavioral health options to rural communities through programs like AgWell, Colorado Agricultural Addiction and Mental Health Program and Buck the Trend.
Now more help has arrived, in the creation of an Ag Behavioral Work Group, which the Colorado Department of Agriculture announced Tuesday.
The group was formed through Senate Bill 55, which passed in 2024 and is scheduled for a sunset review in 2029. It is tasked with guiding an agricultural and rural behavioral health program within the Behavioral Health Administration, and will have a dedicated administration staff member who will serve as a liaison between the administration, the Colorado Department of Agriculture, behavioral health-care providers, rural community leaders, agricultural communities, and nonprofit organizations that serve agricultural communities, according to the bill.
The group consists of 14 people who represent varying types of experts on agriculture and behavioral or mental health, both as care providers or care seekers, as well as representatives from the state Agriculture, Public Health and Environment and Behavioral Health departments. Sakata has stepped in to lead it for the Agriculture Department.
State Rep. Meghan Lukens, whose district includes several rural counties on the Western Slope, said she worked on the bill with the Colorado Farmers Union because “the lack of mental health support in rural Colorado is a very pervasive issue, and we see study after study and example after an example of how, especially in our agricultural communities, lack of behavioral health and mental health support is leading to an increased level of suicide rates.”
U.S. Sen. Michael Bennet reported in a farmer and rancher mental health study one-pager that the rate of suicide among farmers is 3.5 times greater than the general population.
And according to the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment, in the five years from 2018 to 2022, there were 102 suicides among people whose careers are in agriculture, forestry, fishing or hunting, making it the fourth-highest rate among all occupations tracked by the department, behind construction workers, mining and oil workers, and managers of companies.
