By Alessia Proietti | rdnewsNOW

Lacombe farmer speaks at provincial conference about increasing rural crime and mental health strains

Apr 24, 2024 | 12:08 PM

A local farmer from central Alberta will be featured as a guest speaker at the annual Alberta Community Crime Prevention Association (ACCPA) conference this May to speak about crime and mental health initiatives in rural communities.

From May 6 –8, held at the Westin Hotel in Calgary, the conference brings together law enforcement, municipalities, agencies, institutions, and citizens to discuss current issues in crime and how to make communities safer through education and crime prevention awareness.

Various speakers and exhibitors will be present including the Government of Alberta’s Hate Crime Unit, RCMP, Gangs & Guns with Alberta Law Enforcement Response Teams (ALERT), Alberta Integrated Child Exploitation (I.C.E.) Unit, and more.

With this year’s theme of “Pathways to Safe Communities: Wellness and Resilience in Times of Change”, Lacombe’s Linda Hunt, Program Director for AgKnow, also known as the Alberta Farm Mental Health Network, will be speaking about their efforts to increase resiliency in farming communities.

A study in September 2023 by the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives shared that mental health struggles like stress, depression, and anxiety were higher for Canadian farmers than the general public. Surveys conducted by AgKnow in 2021 also showed similar results, with suicide ideation over two times higher in Canadian farmers than the general public.

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“Rural people have mental health conditions as much as city people do and so, how can we build those supports when we have a smaller tax base and fewer resources,” she said, adding farmers need their voices at the forefront.

With extreme commodity and harvest fluctuations, Hunt says many farmers have off-farm incomes in the oil and gas industries as a form of risk management. However, both of those industries have faced increasing challenges over the past few years.

“Those policies around climate change that are coming out of the federal government are causing a lot of change and disruption and uncertainty in those two industries,” she said.

In addition, she says rural crime has been on the rise causing anxiety, particularly with break and enters. As a single farmer, Hunt says she has had to put gates and cameras on her property, noting that farmers need to find ways to defend themselves when RCMP are over 30 minutes away.

She claims rural communities are also easy targets when the economy is bad as farmers tend to be trusting individuals who leave their doors unlocked. She says in her neighbourhood, balers and tractors have been stolen overnight.

Alberta RCMP confirmed that at the Blackfalds detachment, not including the town itself, officers responded to 26 break-and-enter calls since January this year. They say this is a 37 per cent increase since this time last year, which saw 19 calls. However, they say it is a 63 per cent decrease since 2020, which had 71 calls.

Hunt adds there aren’t as many mental health supports in rural communities, with many calling police during times of need; but this causes those in distress to be treated like criminals rather than for their condition.

Finally, she says farmers have also had to face animal activists who believe they are polluting the environment and poisoning produce, particularly shown in documentaries and by organizations.

One recent example includes an incident in September 2019 when a dozen activists entered the property of the Jumbo Valley Hutterite turkey farm near Fort Macleod to protest what they deemed were inhumane treatment of animals. However, Hunt says many residents in the community were upset as the protesters instead compromised the biosecurity of the animals.

“People don’t really think about who farmers are. I’m Canadian, I’m Albertan, I care about the same things that Canadians and Albertans do, I eat from the grocery store; why on earth would I poison my neighbours and myself and my family and my friends?” she asked.

“We hear that a lot from our stakeholders is that ‘the people just don’t understand us’ and because they don’t understand us, they have a tendency to isolate themselves instead of engaging with their urban counterparts.”

On a brighter note, Hunt believes there has been an increased awareness for local farming since the pandemic as, with food scarcities in grocery stores, many realized the difficulties of farming when they tried to grow their own food at home. She says that while Canadians have preached for ethically sourced foods during good economic times, typically they would search for cheap foods during economic downturns. However, post-COVID, she says people are still demanding local foods even with inflationary pressures.

During the conference, Hunt states she will share findings from their most recent surveys with stakeholders, their offerings to farmers such as free counselling, creating positive and accurate media campaigns for public education on the farming industry, attracting funding for ongoing programs, expanding programs to rural communities beyond just the farmers, rural-specific training for professionals, reducing stigma around mental health, and more.

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