Change as a Double-edged Sword: Ecological Farmers’ Stressors and Responses to Changes In Farming in Grey County, Ontario
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Farming is a well-known stressful occupation, with farmers facing a multitude of stressors and higher rates of mental health problems than the general population. Farming continues to change, with greater use of technology, changing ownership and management of farms, globalization of agricultural inputs and products, and climate change. Although there has been research to document these changes, to the researchers’ knowledge there has been no qualitative studies, particularly within Canada, to understand farmers’ perceptions of these changes and link them to their stressors and mental health. In this qualitative study, based on 16 in-depth interviews with small-scale farmers in Grey County of Southwestern Ontario, Canada, we explored farmers’ perceptions of changing farming practices and their implications for their health as well as ways of responding and adapting to these changes. Thematic analysis using a social ecology framework revealed a number of major themes. Farmers’ relationships to change were complex with both benefits and challenges of changing farm practices for health and well-being—a “double-edged sword.” Technology changes were important new tools, while weather had become more extreme, rapid and un-predictable. Growing weather uncertainty generated brutal stress for some. Farmers described turning to ecological farming and the resilience that they experience from diversified farming which connects them to the land “essentially being at one with place.” Their passion for farming connected to beliefs about protecting the land, even if most markets do not reward a farmer for doing so. Farmers also highlighted the lack of support they experienced from governments—dealing with bureaucracy, community—and experiences of isolation. Implications for policies and systems include increased support for farmers financially and administratively and interventions which build on their work with farm organizations. Keywords: Agriculture, diversified farming, stressors, resilience, qualitative research, Canada ---------------------------------------------- Le changement comme une epee a double tranchant: facteurs de stress des agriculteurs ecologiques et reponses aux changements dans l'agriculture dans le comte de Grey, en Ontario L'agriculture est une activite stressante bien connue, les agriculteurs etant confrontes a une multitude de facteurs de stress et a des taux de problemes de sante mentale plus eleves que la population generale. L'agriculture continue de changer, avec une utilisation accrue de la technologie, des changements de proprietaires et de gestion des exploitations agricoles, la mondialisation des intrants et des produits agricoles ainsi que le changement climatique. Bien qu'il y ait eu des recherches pour documenter ces changements, a la connaissance des chercheurs, il n'y a pas eu d'etudes qualitatives, en particulier au Canada, pour comprendre la perception qu'ont les agriculteurs de ces changements et les relier a leurs facteurs de stress et a leur sante mentale. Dans cette etude qualitative, basee sur 16 entretiens approfondis avec de petits agriculteurs du comte de Grey du sud-ouest de l'Ontario, au Canada, nous avons explore la perception qu'ont les agriculteurs des changements de pratiques agricoles et de leurs implications pour leur sante ainsi que des moyens de reagir et de s'adapter a ces changements. Une analyse thematique utilisant un cadre d'ecologie sociale a revele un certain nombre de themes majeurs. Les relations entre les agriculteurs et le changement etaient complexes avec a la fois les avantages et les defis de changer les pratiques agricoles pour la sante et le bien-etre - une « epee a double tranchant ». Les changements technologiques etaient de nouveaux outils importants, tandis que les conditions meteorologiques etaient devenues plus extremes, rapides et imprevisibles. L'incertitude climatique croissante a genere un stress brutal pour certains. Les agriculteurs ont explique qu'ils se sont tournes vers l'agriculture ecologique et la resilience qu'ils ressentent grâce a une agriculture diversifiee qui les relie a la terre « essentiellement en harmonie avec le lieu ». Leur passion pour l'agriculture est liee aux croyances sur la protection de la terre, meme si la plupart des marches ne recompensent pas un agriculteur pour cela. Les agriculteurs ont egalement souligne le manque de soutien dont ils ont fait l'objet de la part des gouvernements – traiter avec la bureaucratie, la communaute – ainsi qu’aux experiences d'isolement. Les implications pour les politiques et les systemes comprennent un soutien accru aux agriculteurs sur les plans financier et administratif et des interventions qui s'appuient sur leur travail avec les organisations agricoles. Mots-cles: Agriculture, agriculture diversifiee, facteurs de stress, resilience, recherche qualitative, Canada
Fetched live from OpenAlex and de-inverted. Abstracts are not stored in this database: the inverted indexes are 8.6 GB of the frame’s 9.3 GB of text, and the host has 13 GB free.
How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame distilled prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.
Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one teacher head, not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".