Farmers feed the world, and too often, they do so at the expense of their own wellbeing.
In conversations about farmworker fairness, we tend to focus on wages, labor protections, and access to healthcare. These are essential. But there’s another dimension of fairness that receives far less attention: mental health. Across the United States, farmers and agricultural professionals experience some of the highest rates of anxiety, depression, and suicide of any occupation (USDA National Agricultural Statistics Service, 2022). This reality reflects the conditions of the work itself. And if we’re serious about fairness in agriculture, we need to rethink not only how farmers are compensated, but how they are prepared and supported for the demands of the profession.
Farming today is shaped by uncertainty– weather volatility, market pressures, physical strain, and often profound isolation. There is also the emotional weight of stewarding land and feeding communities within systems that can undervalue both. Yet despite this, most farmer training programs remain focused almost entirely on technical skill development, leaving future farmers underprepared for the psychological and emotional dimensions of the work.
What if fairness began earlier?
Mental health isn’t a skill to be learned, like operating a tractor. But what if the capacities that support it– resilience, self-awareness, and stress management– can be intentionally developed through learning environments?
This distinction matters. Rather than treating mental health as a discrete skill, it invites us to focus on cultivating the conditions, practices, and internal resources that protect and strengthen wellbeing over time. It shifts the conversation from reactive to proactive.
This question is informing a new line of research within our Rodale Institute Farmer Training (RIFT) program. Over the course of our nine-month immersive experience, adult learners engage in organic agriculture while participating in a learning environment intentionally designed to support wellbeing, stress resilience, and identity development.
This research is grounded in two complementary frameworks. Ecological Design Theory suggests that the environments we create– physical, social, and cultural– shape how people think, feel, and learn. Transformational Learning Theory explores how individuals make meaning of their experiences and, through reflection, shift how they understand themselves and their roles in the world. Together, these perspectives point to an expanded view of education– one that recognizes learning as both skill-building and human development.
The study asks a simple but consequential question: How might intentionally designed, nature-based learning environments influence the wellbeing and resilience of future farmers?
To explore this, the research uses a mixed-methods approach that centers the lived experiences of adult learners. Interviews, focus groups, reflective journals, and field observations will be paired with biometric data– such as heart rate variability, sleep, and activity levels– collected through wearable devices. The goal is not to prove a predetermined outcome, but to better understand how different elements of the learning environment may shape stress, regulation, and professional identity over time.
This approach also reframes what it means to prepare someone for a career in agriculture. Alongside technical expertise, it positions resilience, self-awareness, and stress management as essential parts of professional preparation. Not as woo-woo or abstract ideals, but as capacities that can be supported through program design– through time in nature, structured reflection, community connection, and the rhythms of working with living systems.
It also invites us to broaden how we define farmworker fairness. Fair wages and safe working conditions must remain central. But alongside them, we need to consider access to mental health resources, the role of community, and the responsibility of educational institutions to prepare individuals for the full reality of agricultural life.
There is a cultural dimension to this as well. Farming has long been associated with resilience in its most rugged form– the ability to endure hardship without complaint. While perseverance is part of the profession, this narrative can make it harder to acknowledge struggle or seek support. Expanding that narrative– making space for reflection, awareness, and support– offers a more sustainable path forward.
My interest in this work is both professional and personal. Long before I had the language for regenerative organic agriculture or educational theory, I learned from being outside– riding my bike through wooded trails, catching lightning bugs on humid summer nights, staying out just a little longer as the street lights came on. In the Northeast, the seasons made learning experiential: the first thaw, the fullness of summer, the slow turning of leaves, the stillness of winter. Those rhythms shaped how I understand learning and resilience in ways I didn’t fully recognize at the time. Over the years, that understanding has been reinforced through my work in education and through observing adult learners navigating complex life and career transitions.
This research is an extension of those observations, but it is also an invitation. An invitation to educators, program designers, and institutional leaders to consider what it would mean to design for the whole human being, not just the technical role they are preparing to fill.
Farmworker fairness, at its core, is about dignity. It is about recognizing that the people who grow our food are not just producers, but individuals navigating demanding, meaningful, and often challenging work. If we want a more just and sustainable food system, we must begin by asking how we can better support them, not only in the field, but in the learning environments that shape who they become.