AgWellness Episode 4: Interview with Justen Smith
Josh Dallin 0:11
Hello and welcome to the AgWellness podcast. We are your host, Josh Dallin and Jake Hadfield. This new podcast series will explore stories about farmers and ranchers and the impact of stress, mental health and other issues. This podcast series is part of a nationwide initiative, and Utah is part of the Western Regional team. You can find out more about our work by visiting our website at farm stress.us.
Jake Hadfield 00:40
To meet our goal to help decrease stress amongst farmers slash agricultural workers, we've developed two courses that help with wellbeing. The first course is the mental health awareness and advocacy course. The purpose of this course is an increased understanding of how to identify mental health issues, how to locate resources for mental health issues, and how to respond to mental health issues effectively. A member of our team has been teaching this course in a university setting for several years and has received a lot of positive feedback from students for whom the course has had a positive impact in their life or given them the tools to help others they are close to. We aim to teach this course to individuals in the farming and ranching community in Utah to better equip folks to deal with mental health issues in their communities.
Josh Dallin 1:29
The other online courseware teaching is a self-directed course aimed to provide people with tools and knowledge to better manage their own stress and other difficult thoughts or feelings. This course uses principles from Acceptance and Commitment training. This type of therapy through many trials is highly effective in helping people manage stress, and other difficult thoughts and feelings that come up in life. This course emphasizes how all thoughts and feelings, whether they are pleasant or unpleasant, can be a part of a meaningful life. The course helps people get unstuck from difficult events, so that they can feel better equipped to make value-based actions towards a life they find meaningful.
Jake Hadfield 02:15
These are just some of the activities we will be completing to support our farming and ranching community in Utah in the West. Please enjoy this podcast and subscribe so you don't miss our upcoming episodes.
Josh Dallin 02:31
Hello, everyone, thank you for joining us for episode four of our AgWellness Podcast. Today we have the pleasure of having Utah State University Extension Ag and Natural Resource director, Justen Smith with us are very grateful to Justen for taking the time to be here to talk to us about what he sees in his role in extension as far as mental health and the concerns that are there and also some of the impacts and positive outcomes that are being seen as we try to tackle these issues and break the stigma.
Welcome Justin, thanks so much for being with us today. Thanks for the invitation. Happy to be here. Would you mind taking a moment to introduce to our listeners who you are, what your role looks like and some of your past experiences that have led you to the position that you're currently in?
Justen Smith 03:27
Sure. So, I've been an extension for 22 years now. I actually started as a county agent in 12 County. And an ag agent was there for about a year and a half and then went to Washington State University as an area animal scientist. And really enjoyed that role and was there for about three years and had the opportunity to go internationally and work in Armenia for three years as director of a livestock development project for USDA. But Utah is home for me. And so, I had the opportunity to come back to Utah in 2004. And this is where I've been since so, I've been what 17 years now back with Utah State University, worked as a county faculty in Davis County overseeing the foreach agriculture program. And then four years ago, I was appointed as an administrator with extension and now serve as the director of the extension Ag and Natural Resources Department. I also serve as the state agriculture program leader for USU extension. My education I graduated from snow college and then transferred to Utah State University. I have degrees in animal science, and then agriculture systems technology. And besides doing extension work in Utah had the opportunity to complete international development assignments across the globe in many different Countries and try and help people that are in great need improve their food production and their agriculture systems. So had a I've had a wonderful career and enjoy what I do.
Jake Hadfield 05:15
Yeah, you've had an extensive career. That's for sure. And so, I guess a question that we kind of wanted to pose to you is, over the years, how have you seen the language and attitudes around mental health change?
Justen Smith 05:30
Oh, unfortunately, I've seen mental health. I've seen people suffering more from mental illness, I've seen more cases of depression. Unfortunately, in Utah, we've seen our suicide rates go up. And that is not a good trend. I think there's a lot of factors that play into that. But, you know, I'll talk about Utah, specifically COVID-19 is pandemic has made things even worse. And not only for the general population, but for ag producers, as well. And so, I really appreciate the work that, for example, Jacob and Josh that you're doing, and extension as well as a whole in trying to address this upward trend in mental health and suicide.
Josh Dallin 06:28
Well, we appreciate that. And, you know, you're right. When you talk about the staggering numbers, it's, it's heart wrenching. And Jake, and I have as we've had the opportunity to steal some of this programming and some of these helpmates across the state, it's always interesting. When we talk with producers, and we educate them on some of the mental health awareness, skill sets, and some of the helpmates, the AIDS, the phone numbers, that websites, it's interesting to hear them tell their stories.
And it's interesting to hear them talk about people that they know that have been lost to suicide, or people that they know that have attempted suicide or have struggled. Could you maybe expound upon a little bit, some of the things that you've seen in your career that you would feel are major issues that are a causation? Two, that related stress and that and those types of mental health problems? We know that the agricultural industry is generally the highest in those numbers, and then the trend that you're seeing that's moving upwards, but what would you think would you would identify with all of your experience are some of those key stressors or key issues that caused those related mental health problems?
Justen Smith 07:56
Sure. Well, I grew up in agriculture, I'm from Mount Pleasant, and Sanpete County. And, you know, back when I was growing up, a farmer or rancher could actually make a living and support a family, in the agriculture industry. And I've noticed, you know, as I've gotten older, and as I've gotten continued to work in the ag industry, not really on the production side, but more in the extension and education side, I just keep noticing this trend, it's becoming more and more difficult for a farmer ranch family to make a living, if they're just going to farm or if they're just going to Ranch, they're needing to go out and get second jobs to support the family. So that's a stressor, because agriculture is a way of life, it's a good way of life. And it's a way of life that these families want their children to grow up in. And when they're forced to go out and take second jobs or third jobs, to continue that way of life that causes stress. The other thing that I've heard from farmers and ranchers across the state is they feel like they've been a failure. They may be a sixth or seventh generation farmer rancher, and they're wondering if they're the one in their family line that's going to lose the farm. And that is a tremendous amount of pressure on these on these families. The pandemic would that disrupted the food supply chain, which we're still suffering from that today has been another major stress. We have ranchers who have nowhere to sell their cattle. We have dairy producers that were dumping milk. We have dairy producers who have cold cattle that we don't have any processors right now that are taking the coal cows in Utah. So, what do they do with these animals? I mean, the list goes on and on. But the pandemic definitely disrupted the Ag supply chain, which has greatly affected our farmers and caused them to be even more financially in dire straits financially, which again causes stress and depression. Then we have the drought. On top of everything that's going on, we have this historic drought that is continuing that this last summer just really wreaked havoc amongst our farmers and ranchers. We had ranchers who could not put their livestock out onto their regular grazing lands are their grazing permits, because of the drought, so they were forced to feed hay, hay prices were at all-time high, you know, reaching $300 a ton if you could find the hay. And so, they were forced to sell off large numbers of their herds just to stay afloat. And really not much help out there financially for them. Along with that drought, you know, Utah, most of our
water does go to AG. But for good reason. I mean, we were growing food. But what happened is we're suffering from this drought; the farmers and ranchers are already struggling. And then you start seeing the public perception change to where they're blaming agriculture, for the water problems, saying oh, well, you're growing alfalfa, which is then all that's being exported to China or to Japan or overseas. Well, the fact is, the majority of it is not majority of the hey, that's grown here, stays in Utah to feed our livestock. And our farmers and ranchers are some of the best water stewards there are. They know how important that water is. And so, over the years, they've invested in water optimization, and improved pivots, improved methods of irrigation, conserving water, changing to crops that don't use as much water. And so, Utah State University our faculty have been heavily involved in working with our farmers and ranchers in water optimization in water conservation. So they see the all this work that they've done, they know they're good stewards of water, but yet the public perception is blaming our farmers and ranchers for a lot of the water loss, because the general population is saying, Well, I want to keep a green lawn, you know, my lawns, I'm not able to water every single day. And that hurt a lot of farmers and ranchers that public perception, or some people even saying, well, we need to go after the agriculture water, so we can use it for more of the urban population. I think that really affected the mental health of many of our agro agriculture producers. And now with this sudden wave of Omicron, we see the egg supply chain affected even more participate in a meeting at the state capitol building yesterday, where for two hours we discussed the egg supply chain, and how it's been disrupted, and how there's really no solution right now. And the solution is to grow local and by local, so that we don't have to rely on semis bringing food in from out of state or out of country. Well, that's great to grow local, but if all of our ag land which it is being sold off for development and housing, how can we grow our population, and Utah's going to double in the next 30 years. So, we need to do something to address the loss of our ag land so that we can grow local so that people are able to buy local products. Utah Farm Bureau has done a wonderful job trying to address this they have started an online food marketing program, where you can go on and do a subscription box every month that's consists of Utah products. And then they've even created one it's more like an Amazon style in pick and choose local food products from Utah that you're able to buy. They've started their plant in Ogden, that's a food hub, where they're processing meat and to help to expand that to include fruits and vegetables. So that's a glimmer of hope. If we can try and model that and create that in other parts of the state and have these regional food hubs where we can have food that's brought in processed and then transported out from these hubs. I think that's going to help you top but we're definitely going to need help at a government level private investment to make that happen.
Jake Hadfield 14:53
That's perfect. Justen, thank you for sharing that. I think you hit a couple key things on the head one of those things that I really think that you hit the topic, well, was talking about how the perception of farming is changing. I mean, we're referring specifically to the drought. But if you look over the past few years, with the increased influence of social media and whatnot, we see that AG is fought on a lot of fronts, there's a lot of different fronts that we see are attacked, often. Farmers are often called out, as, you know, things that they really shouldn't be, you know, there's a lot of animal welfare different things where these farmers are doing everything, right. And they're still being called out for it. And I was talking to someone about this last night. And one of the things that I was talking about is, eventually you got to think that subconsciously, that's gonna affect you a little bit, you know, constantly having to defend yourself or your way of life and what you do. I mean, how many industries do you know where farmers and ranchers producers have to go out and they actually go to educational meetings where they learn chemistry, finances, different aspects, so that they can continue doing what they're doing and to be attacked? With attacked? While you're doing that, that makes it hard. So, thank you for sharing that. I think that's just something that we really need to point out here is, it can be hard at times. So, with all those impacts that you shared, Justen, one of the things I wanted to ask is, how do you think that? Well, I guess the question is, do you think that mental health will change how the ag industry looks? Or do you think it'll change how we do things? In the future? What are your thoughts on that?
Justen Smith 16:35
I feel that a farmers and ranchers continue to suffer financially, if they continue to be blamed for water problems in the state, then they're going to throw in the towel, they're gonna say this isn't worth it. My mental health is more important, my family, my relationship with my family is more important. And we're just going to give up the price of land and Utah skyrocketing. So, they're thinking to themselves, wait a minute, you know, I'm out there working my guts out. Yet, I'm not appreciated. But yet I can sell this land and become an instant multimillionaire? Well, you can't blame them. I mean, that, that, that makes sense. And why would you want to suffer when you could sell off and live a nice, comfortable life. But we do have a lot of farmers or ranchers that believe in, in ag, they know that people have to eat. They know it's a lifestyle, and it's a heritage, and they're fighting and their resilience. And that's what amazes me is the resiliency of our ag producers, and how strong they truly are. Our general population needs to realize food does not magically appear at the grocery store, that there are people hard working, farm and ranch families, not only in Utah, but across this nation that are working every day to produce the food we eat. And there needs to be a greater appreciation for what they're doing. It's easy to say, well, we can just get food from other countries. But that's a national security issue. It's a quality issue. It's also easy to say well, we can just get food from other states where there's more rainfall, more moisture. Again, what happens when the truck the semi-trucks coming in, because there's no truck drivers do the research. Now look at how, how desperate we are for truck drivers and how our supply chain at our ports and with our trucking industry has been affected. And if else trucks start coming in our food, the shelves at our grocery stores become bare. Because we don’t, we're not food sustainable. here in Utah, we only produce about 3% of the fruits and vegetables here in Utah. For our population, everything else comes from out of state, we do produce about maybe half to 60% of our meats. And we do have still a lot of dairy that we were able to keep here in the state. But a lot of our food unfortunately does come out of state and it's all based on that transportation. If it's affected, then our food doesn't arrive at the grocery store. People start to go hungry or food prices start to go up. And our families that already struggling financially can't afford to buy food. And then that puts stress on them as well. So, there needs to be more appreciation for farming industry or ag industry so that the mental health can improve. I think there needs to be some incentive incentives out there, whether it's from government or from private industry, so that farmers and ranchers can stay in business, or that young people wanting to go into agriculture have the ability to do so. If the price of land in Utah the way it is there's no way someone out of high school or out of college can go and buy a farm or ranch. It's just not financially feasible. So, unless they're inheriting from someone, or they're making money somewhere else, they just can't do it. So, there has to be some type of program where the next generation is able to get into agriculture and produce food for the next generation.
Josh Dallin 20:17
Thank you so much for that I love your focus on appreciation for those that are creating that food chain for us. And what you speak of is a reality. And it's frightening to think about to think about not being able to afford what little might be at the grocery store, if we don't make some changes over the next few years. And as you mentioned, less food with more population is going to make those prices even higher and the acquisition of those commodities more competitive. And no, that's exactly why we need to have programs in place and appreciation in place for those producers. I would like to switch gears just briefly, since we have the opportunity to have you here. Utah's Utah State University Extension is oftentimes known as one of Utah's best kept secrets. And we would like to ask you to maybe take a few seconds to educate our listeners on all of the programming and all of the amazing things that you feel that your department and that especially on the Ag and Natural Resource focus provides to help educate and also to assist with these problems that we've talked about. Just so that, you know, maybe those listeners that might not be aware of the things that that your that your faculty work on daily are available to them. So, you know, would you maybe give us an elevator speech, if you will, on what extension really is and how you feel that the programming that is available might be able to tackle some of these issues?
Justen Smith 22:10
Sure. So, Utah State University's Utah's land grant university and people always ask what is the land grants back in the Civil War During the Civil War, it was 1862. A senator from Vermont, Justin Morell, actually sponsored a bill to create universities to have a land grant university in every state that would allow the common person to give a higher education. Abraham Lincoln signed that into law. And that started our land grant university system. Every state in the US has a land grant and for you for Utah to Utah State University. So, these land grant universities were created wonderful research related to agriculture was happening, but it wasn't getting out to the population. And so, in 1914, extension officially began with what's called the Smith Lever act, and that extended the university to the people, that's the word extension. And so, for the past, over 100, plus years here in Utah extension has existed. We have county faculty in every county in Utah, they used to be called county agents are, but now we're more. I mean, we're faculty of the university, but we're based in the counties or title now was county faculty. So, these are highly educated faculty of the university that are actually housed in a county and they're usually in a county courthouse is where the extension office is located. And they work with the community, they do a needs assessment to find out what the needs of the community are. And then they try to bring resources from the university to address those needs. In the area of Ag and Natural Resources. Many of our county faculty have farms of their own. Josh, you raise sheep, amongst many other animals. I mean, you've your family's been involved in ag for generations. So, this is very real for our faculty, not only are they working with other ag producers, but they themselves some of them are also ag producers. And so, they're feeling this stress and the mental health is affecting them from two angles, you know, they themselves are producers, as well as working with producers that are struggling. So, extension. You know, we're involved in pretty much every aspect of the ag industry, whether it be crops, livestock range, really big into water conservation. And in addition to having county faculty in every county, we have You know, what is it 70 specialists based in on the Logan campus, in every area you can imagine beef specialists, irrigation specialist, agronomists, landscape architects, you name it. These are PhD level specialists that we can call upon as county faculty, if we don't have the expertise for them to come and help. And they do, they come out. And there's research projects and plots going on all over the state workshops, classes, field days, taking place daily, all across Utah, to try and help our ag producers. Things are changing. Of course, as our population grows and ag starts to disappear in some of these counties, we've had to shift to more horticulture so that people are planting trees and landscape. Plants that actually are water conserving. We're very big right now into water conservation. We created the drought, that usu.edu website to address water shortage in all aspects, not only ag but in landscape, in home landscapes. So, we see a need, we bring our resources together to address it. We are spread thin, when we wish we were double the amount of people we have an extension, but it is what it is. And I feel our faculty worked very hard every day to and they care, they genuinely care for the clientele they serve. And we are a secret. I mean, we market ourselves. And we're fairly well known in the rural counties and rural communities. But in the more urban settings, it's always interesting to hear someone that that finally hears about extension that comes down and comes out and find out what we do. They're always in awe, they're like, Wow, we had no idea this resource was available, and most of it for free. We have of course, the 4-H youth program that is a tremendous teaches youth leadership skills, and how to be better citizens. And you can pretty much do a for each project in any area. Of course, our traditional has always been livestock and horse. But there's now more science, technology, anything you can imagine. In for each and both. We have four H clubs spread across the state, that extension administrates and overseas. So just so many resources, if you go to our extension.usu.edu website, start scrolling through, it's a deep dive, you'll find information on hundreds, if not 1000s of topics related to agriculture, natural resources, horticulture. And then of course, we also have our home and communities department. It's everything from food preservation, to opioid addiction prevention, mental health, on and on. Was maybe longer, too long for an elevator speech. It was a long.
Jake Hadfield 28:09
No, I think that was perfect, Justin, and thank you for sharing that. And also, thank you for just meeting with us today and doing this interview, I think your expertise in the ag industry. I mean, you have brought up a lot of great points, how mental health is affecting the ag industry really in the nitty gritty details in the day to day things. And so, we really appreciate you taking time out of your busy schedule to meet with us. So, thank you once again. We appreciate that I'll turn it over to you Josh.
Josh Dallin 28:40
I echo what Jake said, we know that you are a very very busy man. And we appreciate you sharing your nuggets of wisdom with us and taking the time to be with us today. We encourage everyone to please explore the resources that Justin has talked about that are available to help in so many different areas. And if there's an area that you don't feel like you can find help on please contact your county faculty at your local level. And they will work hard to be able to find the right connection through our specialists and other colleagues that have those skill sets to be able to help you to the best of their ability. Again, our guest today has been Justin Smith, the director of Ag and Natural Resources for USU extension for the state of Utah. We thank him for being with us. And we thank you for listening to episode four of the Ag wellness podcast. We'll see you next time. Thanks for listening to this episode of the Ag wellness podcast. Please subscribe wherever you get your podcast, visit our website at farm stress.us and connect with us on social media at AG wellness Utah. If you are experiencing stress, mental health concerns or suicidal thoughts or if you know someone who is please contact these resources. As always, if it is an emergency dial 911 crisis lines that are available are:
Suicide Prevention Lifeline 1-800-273-8255 Crisis Text Line Text HOME to 741741
Crisis Response Network 1-800-203-CARE (2273)
SafeUT 833-372-3388 or download their app to use the chat feature
If you need help finding a mental health provider, here are some ways to get started:
Contact the person’s health insurance provider and ask about mental health professionals that are within the network.
Psychology Today Service Finder: On this website, you can search for therapists, psychiatrists, treatment centers and support groups in your area. www.psychologytoday.com/us
Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA)
• Here, you can find general information about mental health services in your area.
• findtreatment.samhsa.gov/
Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA)
• At this website, you can find health centers that offer more affordable options for people that do not have health insurance.
• https://findahealthcenter.hrsa.gov/
U.S. Department of Health and Human Services
• This website can help if you have questions about insurance coverage for mental health.
• https://www.hhs.gov/programs/topic-sites/mental-health-parity/mental-health-and-addiction-insurance-help/index.html
Thanks for listening to the Ag Wellness podcast – be well!